Lebanon says 15 dead in Israeli strikes on three villages

Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli strikes on three villages outside traditional Hizbollah strongholds had killed at least 15 people Saturday, as state media reported further strikes elsewhere.

An "Israeli enemy strike on Maaysra", a Shiite Muslim majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area north of Beirut, left "nine dead and 15 wounded", the ministry said in a statement, updating an earlier toll.

An AFP correspondent in Maaysra saw excavators trying to remove chunks of a destroyed building. Emergency workers, one using a manual sledgehammer, tried to break through a huge slab of concrete.

Separately, the ministry said four people had been killed and 18 others wounded in an "Israeli enemy strike" on Barja in the Shouf district south of the capital.

And the ministry reported two dead, four wounded and "body parts" in a Israeli strike on Deir Billa, some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the town of Batroun on Lebanon's north coast.

This picture shows damages at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Nabatiyeh, Lebanon, on Saturday. AFP

DNA tests were being carried out to determine the identity of the remains, the statement added.

The official National News Agency (NNA) had said an "Israeli strike" targeted a house in Deir Billa where families from south Lebanon had taken refuge.

Another AFP correspondent in Deir Billa saw a mattress, pillows, bed covers, a washing basket and clothes among the wreckage, as people sifted through the rubble by hand and smoke rose from a smouldering pile.

In east Lebanon, the management of the Tal Chiha hospital said in a statement that the facility had sustained "light material damage" due to "strikes that targeted the vicinity" of the mainly Christian town of Zahle.

No patients or staff had been injured and the hospital was still operating, it added.

Since September 23, Israel has been heavily bombarding south and east Lebanon, as well as Beirut's southern suburbs, saying it is targeting Hizbollah sites.

The mountain area near Maaysra as well as Barja, Deir Billa and Zahle are not areas usually considered Hizbollah strongholds.

Agence France-Presse