Residents in Lebanon were reeling on Monday from an intense wave of Israeli airstrikes in recent days, including in an area near Beirut, the capital, that had once been considered safe from attacks.
Lebanon’s health ministry said that 39 people had died on Sunday as a result of the war, most of them killed in Israeli airstrikes. Since fighting escalated last month between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese group, at least 1,461 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the ministry.
On Sunday, more than 20 of those killed were in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, areas that have experienced heavy Israeli bombardment over the past month.
The Lebanese health ministry said that five people were killed in Jnah, a residential and commercial neighborhood in the Dahiya, an area in the southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway and which has long been a focus for Israel.
At least seven people, including a 4-year-old girl, were killed in an Israeli raid farther south in the town of Kfar Hatta, the Lebanese health ministry said. A member of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Cpl. Hussein Ali Nahleh, was also killed in a strike there, the Lebanese military said. The attack comes days after Israel outlined plans to occupy much of southern Lebanon, even after its current ground offensive ends.
Ain Saadeh, a town east of Beirut that residents have long deemed safe, was also hit by an airstrike on Sunday. The town, a majority-Christian community nestled in the hills overlooking Beirut, is one of many mountain towns that are typically seen as a haven from the summer heat and the thick pollution in the city center.
Several residents in Ain Saadeh expressed confusion after the Israeli attack on Easter Sunday, which killed at least three people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Residents said they did not know who, or what, would have been the target. Most Israeli strikes in and around Beirut have targeted predominantly Shiite Muslim areas.
Fadia Daher, 59, said that she had just come home from church on Sunday when a bright yellow light split the air just across the street from where she lives with her husband and 28-year-old son.
“I was so scared,” she said. She added that she didn’t think Hezbollah fighters lived in the area.
One victim of the strike, Pierre Mouawad, was a local official with the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party that has long been an adversary of Hezbollah, the party said. His wife was also killed, the party added.
Responding to questions from The New York Times about the strike, the Israeli military said on Monday that it had hit a “terror target” and that it was reviewing “reports that several uninvolved individuals were harmed as a result of the strike.” It said that Hezbollah “continues to embed itself within the civilian population.”
Asked about Mr. Mouawad specifically, Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said at a news conference that “the person you’re referring to was definitely not a target,” and the military was still “trying to understand the circumstances of what happened.”
George Sabbagha, 59, who lived in the building that was partly destroyed by the Israeli strike in Ain Saadeh, said he was in the living room of his first-floor apartment with his wife and child when the strike happened.
Suddenly, he said, “we were under the rubble.”
Mr. Sabbagha’s wife and child have been hospitalized and his hand was injured. He said he did not know who would have been the target of the Israeli strike, but he wanted revenge on that person “so I can crush him.” He and other residents said that they were bewildered by the attack.
“We thought that we were in a safe neighborhood,” Mr. Sabbagha said.
Reporting was contributed by Aaron Boxerman, Reham Mourshed, Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad.
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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