AITO, Lebanon — An Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in northern Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.The Israeli military did not immediately comment and the target was not clear. The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito, which is part of the country’s Christian heartland in the north and far from the Hezbollah militant group’s main areas of influence in the south and east.
Rescue workers in Aito searched through the rubble of the building as ambulances stood by to receive the bodies of victims. Nearby buildings and cars were damaged in the strike.The strike came a day after a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the army base and soldiers wounded in the attack, vowing “we will continue to strike Hezbollah without compassion in every part of Lebanon, including in Beirut.”
Sixty-one people were wounded in Sunday’s attack. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel over the past year, killing more than 60 people, although Israel says most have been intercepted by its air defense systems or hit open areas.In Lebanon, some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since last October, according to the country’s Health Ministry. More than three-quarters of the deaths occurred in the past month.
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