AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): At least ten firefighters have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a municipality building in southern Lebanon's Nabatiye Governorate, Lebanon’s health ministry has announced.
The health ministry said on Sunday that the Israeli forces targeted the firefighting station in the town of Baraachit in the Bint Jbeil District overnight as firefighters prepared to embark on a rescue mission.
In a statement, the ministry condemned the attack, stating, "The Israeli enemy has committed a new war crime against firefighters and paramedical personnel in southern Lebanon, demonstrating unprecedented violence and inhumanity by targeting individuals carrying out purely humanitarian and rescue missions, far removed from what is required on the battlefield."
The ministry added that the death toll may rise as more people were buried under the rubble of the Union of Municipalities building in Bint Jbeil, and search and rescue operations continued to find survivors trapped under the debris left from the Israeli attacks.
It said Israel's latest attacks bring the number of rescuers killed this year to 118, with more than 50 killed by Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire in just a week.
For a fortnight, the Israeli regime forces have been conducting relentless airstrikes on what Tel Aviv claims to be the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement's stronghold in southern Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people and injuring about 9,500 more.
The bombardment has forced 1.2 million to flee their homes, according to figures released by the Lebanese government.
In response, Hezbollah fighters have conducted retaliatory strikes on Zionist positions in the Israeli-occupied lands.
The Lebanese resistance fighters came out in defense of Palestinians after Tel Aviv launched a brutal genocidal war on the Gaza Strip one year ago that has killed nearly 42,000 people, mostly women and children.
Lebanese Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has called on the members of the United Nations Security Council to take immediate action against Tel Aviv as the Israeli forces' bombardment of his country continues.
“Israel is violating our sovereignty by sending their warplanes and drones to our skies,” Mikati told an emergency UNSC meeting at UN headquarters in New York.
De-escalation of the conflict is urgently needed, Mikati insisted. Earlier, he had urged the international community to mount all kinds of political, military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on the Israeli regime leaders "to allow rescue and relief teams to reach bombed sites and allow them to move" the Lebanese casualties to hospitals and medical centers.
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