Ambulances rush to the site of an Israeli drone attack that targeted the Palestinian refugees camp of Ain al-Helweh near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. Lebanon said an Israeli strike killed at least 13 people, as Israel said it struck a Hamas compound. (Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat, AFP
Lebanon said an Israeli strike on Tuesday night local time on a crowded Palestinian refugee camp in the country’s south killed at least 13 people, as Israel said it struck a Hamas compound.
The militant group denied it had military installations in Palestinian camps in Lebanon and called Israel’s claims “lies”.
An AFP correspondent saw firefighters putting out a blaze on the lower floor of a stricken building, as gunmen fired shots to clear crowds from the path of ambulances that were streaming into Ain al-Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, located on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon.
Israel has kept up strikes on Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreed last November that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hamas ally Hezbollah, including two months of full-blown war.
Israel usually says it is targeting operatives or sites belonging to the Iran-backed Hezbollah but it has also struck Hamas operatives in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported “13 dead and a number of others wounded” in the strike, adding that “ambulances are still transporting more wounded to nearby hospitals”.
The state-run National News Agency said the strike targeted a car in a parking lot near the Khalid bin al-Walid Mosque and that “subsequently it was reported that the raid also targeted” the mosque itself and a centre of the same name.
The AFP correspondent did not see any damage to the mosque, while a medic said that rescue workers were removing body parts from the area.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it “struck terrorists who operated in a Hamas training compound in the Ain al-Helweh area in southern Lebanon”, adding that it was “operating against Hamas’s establishment in Lebanon”.
But Hamas, blaming Israel for a “brutal assault” on the Ain al-Helweh camp, said in a statement that “claims that the targeted location was a ‘training compound affiliated with the movement’ are pure fabrications and lies”.
“There are no military installations in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon,” it added.
The Israeli military released a video of a strike hitting a building, but Hamas claimed that “the targeted site was an open sports field frequented by the youth of the camp”, and that “those targeted were a group of young boys” on the field at the time.
In October 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas over the Gaza war, triggering months of exchanges.
Under heavy United States pressure and fear of expanded Israeli strikes, Lebanon’s Government has begun disarming Hezbollah and is seeking to disarm all non-state groups.
During a visit to Beirut in May, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun that weapons in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps would be handed over to the Lebanese authorities.
Some Palestinian factions in Ain al-Helweh handed over weapons in September, a Palestinian official said at the time, but Hamas has not announced plans to disarm in Lebanon.
Lebanon hosts about 222,000 Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations agency UNRWA.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese Army stays out of the Palestinian camps and leaves Palestinian factions to handle security.
Meanwhile, a knife attack by two Palestinian teenagers left an Israeli civilian dead and three others wounded in the occupied West Bank today, Israeli emergency services and the military said.
An Army statement said soldiers had “eliminated two terrorists at the scene” and claimed “explosive materials were found in their vehicle”.
The attack took place at the Gush Etzion Junction, a crossroads among a cluster of Israeli settlements on the main road south from Jerusalem to Hebron.
The Israeli military said it responded to a “ramming and stabbing attack”.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said in a statement that one man died with a stab wound, and paramedics and an Army medical force referred three injured people to two Jerusalem hospitals.
They were a woman in a serious condition, plus a man and a teenage boy both in a moderate condition.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the man killed was 71.
The Israeli West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, named him as local resident Aharon Cohen.
The Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem said the woman in a serious condition had suffered a gunshot wound to her lower body and was undergoing surgery.
Local media reported that she may have been shot by Israeli security forces targeting the assailants.
The Palestinian Civil Affairs Authority named the attackers as Imran al-Atrash and Walid Sabbarna, two 18-year-olds from the Hebron area, and said that Israeli forces were “holding their bodies”.
Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.
Hamas hailed the attackers, as did the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.
“The heroic car-ramming and stabbing attack... is a natural response to [Israel’s] attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause and the escalating aggression perpetrated by occupation soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Hamas said in a statement.
The Gush Etzion Junction has been the site of several attacks on Israelis since late 2015.
Yaron Rosental, head of the Gush Etzion regional council, told reporters at the scene that they “together with the Army, will make the terrorists and all their community pay a very high price”.
The Yesha Council, a body representing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, blamed the assault on the Israeli Government’s refusal to annex the Palestinian territory.
Apart from East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, more than 500,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank in settlements, alongside some three million Palestinians.
All Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory are considered illegal under international law.
Today’s attack came the day after Israeli security forces clashed with demonstrators as they dismantled an illegal Israeli settler outpost in the Gush Etzion area.
Yesterday homes and vehicles in the nearby Palestinian village of Jab’a were torched, after which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed he would deal with the violent “handful of extremists” among Israeli settlers.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 1007 Palestinians - many of them militants, but also scores of civilians - in the West Bank since the start of the war, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
At least 44 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.
-Agence France-Presse