IDF airstrikes kill 45 people while seven die, including four Thai workers, in rocket attack on northern Israel
Senior US officials have held talks in Israel aimed at brokering a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on a day when more civilians in both countries were killed in the year-long war.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, who had expressed optimism of a speedy settlement “in hours or days” earlier on Thursday, said that Israel’s “ongoing escalation” in his country “does not inspire optimism”.
The country’s health ministry said that Israeli attacks had killed 45 people in the previous 24 hours, amid bombing in the north-east Bekaa valley and infantry battles in the south. In one Bekaa village, eight people were killed from the same family.
In northern Israel, seven people were killed by rocket fire from Lebanon, including four Thai agricultural workers, in the worst civilian losses in Israel on a single day since the ground incursions into Lebanon began on 1 October.
Israel issued its second evacuation order for the city of Baalbek and two surrounding villages in the Bekaa valley on Thursday afternoon, carrying out a series of airstrikes on the village of Durous a few hours later. The evacuation orders had prompted a mass exodus of residents from the city, which is home to a Unesco world heritage site.
Despite the evacuation order and danger from Israeli bombing, some residents remained. In Bednayel, a village on the outskirts of Baalbek, rescuers pulled a corpse out of the rubble of a collapsed building levelled in an Israeli airstrike the night before. Eight people from the same family were killed in the strike.
