By Nazih Osseiran
April 5 (Reuters) – An Israeli airstrike on Kfarhata, a village in south Lebanon, killed seven people on Sunday, including a 4-year-old child, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement.
Another Israeli attack on the Jnah neighbourhood in Beirut killed four people and injured 39 others, the ministry added.
The strike on Kfarhata followed an overnight evacuation order by the Israeli military instructing residents to leave the village.
As Lebanese Christians, who make up roughly a third of the population, marked Easter Sunday, the country experienced one of its most violent days since fighting with Israel erupted early last month.
Throughout the day, Beirut echoed with the sounds of strikes and the screech of low-flying planes overhead. The southern suburbs of the capital were hit by eight airstrikes, state media reported.
Earlier on Sunday, the Lebanese army said a soldier had been killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon.
On Saturday, the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning targeting Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing with Syria, the main entry point connecting the two countries, alleging it was being used by the Lebanese Hezbollah armed group for military purposes.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East conflict when Iranian-backed Hezbollah began to launch rockets at Israel on March 2 in support of Tehran.
Israel has launched strikes on Lebanon and invaded the south in what has become the most violent spillover of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
By late March, more than 400 Hezbollah fighters had been killed, sources told Reuters. At least 10 Israeli troops have been killed in southern Lebanon in the same period, the Israeli military has said.
The Lebanese health ministry said 1,461 people had been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon as of Sunday, raising the death toll since the start of the war by 39 in around 24 hours. More than one million people have been displaced.
Israel said it intends to control a “security zone” as deep as 30 km (20 miles) into Lebanese territory. It has issued evacuation orders covering around 15% of Lebanese territory.
But tens of thousands of Lebanese have remained in their homes in the south, including around 9,000 Lebanese Christians living in a cluster of border towns, who told Reuters they were determined to stay.
(Editing by Ros Russell)
