The southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh has been targeted by Israel several times over the past year, but this is one of the most consequential. During one of the daily crisis meetings the city holds in the municipal council building, an Israel airstrike was carried out.
The strike killed at least 16 people, according to the officials, and wounded over 50 others. Among the slain was Ahmed Kheil, the city’s mayor. Lebanese PM Najib Mikati said he believes the attack on the municipal building was deliberate.
Israel, as usual, tells a different story, presenting today’s attacks on Nabatieh as having targeted a Hezbollah “military headquarters,” which they claimed was positioned near civilian targets. There is no indication any such target was hit.
The Nabatieh regional Governate’s governor Howaida Turk said he was present during the attack, and called the Israeli strike on the municipal building a “massacre.” UN humanitarian coordinator Imran Riza condemned the attack as “devastating.”
Local rescue workers were scrambling to rescue as many survivors as possible, but there have been multiple other strikes reported in and around Nabatieh, and the expectation from some preliminary reports is that the overall death toll is going to end up quite a bit higher.
Reporters on the ground said the attacks chiefly targeted residences and civilian infrastructure. That’s in keeping with Israel’s broad targeting strategy elsewhere in Lebanon, where strikes have been soaring in recent weeks.
