An Israeli air strike killed the mayor of a southern Lebanese city and at least 15 other people after it struck municipal buildings in Nabatiyeh, the health ministry said.
The attack raised fears that Israel is widening its campaign against Hizbollah’s Shia militants to include government offices and civilian officials. It was the first major strike on such buildings since the latest Israeli offensive began and came as satellite data showed Israel was widening the scope of its targets in Lebanon.
The attack, in which 52 were injured, also suggests Israeli targets now include Amal, a powerful Shia political party allied to Hizbollah that plays a role in the municipal government and has a strong presence in the area.
“It’s a complete massacre, and the numbers of dead and wounded are still rising,” Hwaida Turk, the provincial governor, told the Financial Times, confirming the deaths of mayor Ahmad Kaheel and the committee members.
Those killed alongside Kaheel included at least four members of the city’s crisis committee tasked with organising relief efforts for the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced since Israel escalated its air campaign in Lebanon at the end of last month, she added.
Israel’s military said it struck dozens of Hizbollah infrastructure targets in the Nabatiyeh area that were “embedded” adjacent to civilian infrastructure.
Nabatiyeh, which is predominantly Shia, is one of southern Lebanon’s most important cities. Both Hizbollah and its longtime allies from Amal have a presence in the city, though Amal dominates its local politics. Unlike Hizbollah, Amal does not have a well-organised military force.
But it does have an armed wing and some of its fighters have died alongside Hizbollah militants in the fighting throughout the past year.
Nabih Berri, leader of Amal, has been the speaker of parliament for more than three decades and is the main interlocutor for the US, western and Arab states that have been trying to negotiate an end to the conflict.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack, which he said struck the Nabatiyeh officials while they were in a meeting to discuss the city’s relief efforts.
Mikati accused the international community of being “deliberately silent” about Israeli strikes that have killed civilians and injured UN peacekeepers.
“What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?” he said.
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Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said any negotiations over a ceasefire with Hizbollah would only take place “under fire”, vowing Israel would continue its offensive in Lebanon until it was safe for Israelis who had been displaced from their homes in the north of the country to return.
“Hizbollah is in great distress,” he said as he carried out a situation assessment near the border with Lebanon. “We will hold negotiations only under fire. I said this on day one, I said it in Gaza and I am saying it here.”
Israeli forces began escalating their campaign against Hizbollah in September, destroying swaths of southern Lebanese villages and hitting the southern Beirut suburb where the militant group had its headquarters, killing many top commanders in air strikes, including leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Lebanese authorities say Israeli bombings have killed more than 2,350 people and injured almost 11,000, mostly in the past three weeks.
Analysis of satellite-based radar measurements shows Israel has widened the scope of its targets throughout Lebanon over the past 12 days, including strikes on scores of villages near Nabatiyeh north of the Litani river that have damaged hundreds of buildings. The data was provided to the FT by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University.
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The measurements highlight increased damage in the north-east Bekaa Valley, as well as along border areas with Syria, where Israel says it has been targeting Hizbollah infrastructure and supply routes.
Israel has also intensified its strikes on a handful of villages and towns along Lebanon’s southern border since October 2, repeatedly pummelling them with air strikes that have caused heavy destruction. Experts said this indicated Israel was clearing lines of sight ahead of further ground operations.
Israel’s military on Wednesday said it had “dismantled” a tunnel network used by Hizbollah’s elite Radwan force that was located in the heart of a town in the south of the country.
It published a video of what it said was footage of the operation, showing a huge cloud of dust rising into the air as near-simultaneous blasts rocked a group of buildings. A Lebanese official told the FT the village was Mhaibib.
Responding to the footage, US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller on Wednesday said: “We do not want to see entire villages destroyed. We don’t want to see civilian homes destroyed. We don’t want to see civilian buildings destroyed.”
“Israel does have a right to go after . . . legitimate targets,” he added, “but they need to do so in a way that protects civilian infrastructure, protects civilians”.
More than a quarter of Lebanon has been told to evacuate by Israel, according to the UN, with upwards of 1.2mn people displaced, most over the past two weeks since Israel began incursions into the south of the country.
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As with most of southern Lebanon, Israel had threatened residents of Nabatiyeh and told them to leave on October 3, leading many to flee. But Kaheel and others remained to co-ordinate relief efforts, he told the FT earlier this month.
On Saturday night, Israeli jets struck the city’s centuries-old market district, destroying several historic buildings and leaving the main commercial artery with mounds of debris.
In addition to targeting Hizbollah, Israeli air strikes have killed rescue workers affiliated to Amal in recent weeks. When asked by the FT to comment on those strikes, Israel’s military called Amal “a terrorist organisation” that deliberately attacked Israeli men, women and children.
Israeli jets have also hit Beirut’s southern suburbs after a lull of six days, despite Washington saying it opposed the scope of Israel’s air strikes on the capital and Mikati saying he had been given “a kind of guarantee” by the US that the pressure on Beirut would be reduced.
Miller on Wednesday added: “We’re opposed to the near-daily strikes, and sometimes daily strikes and sometimes multiple strikes a day in densely populated areas in Beirut . . . And we made clear to the government of Israel that we were opposed to that intense daily bombardment of Beirut, and we saw it dialled back significantly.”
Additional reporting by Chloe Cornish in Beirut, James Shotter in Jerusalem and Jana Tauschinski in London and Steff Chávez in Washington