An Israeli strike near the coastal city of Sidon in southern Lebanon killed eight people and wounded 25 others, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.
The ministry gave no details about the incident, but attacks on Sidon and its immediate vicinity have been rare. The city’s population has ballooned in recent weeks as people have fled there from other parts of the country because of Israel’s invasion.
Israel invaded southern Lebanon this month to fight the militant group Hezbollah, which is Shiite Muslim and backed by Iran. Sidon is largely Sunni Muslim, and Israel has not ordered civilians to evacuate the city, as it has for a number of other towns or city neighborhoods across Lebanon.
There was no immediate comment about the strike from Israel’s military, which said earlier that it was carrying out “targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon. The military also ordered civilians to evacuate 14 other villages in the area and move north of the Awali River, which runs around 35 miles north of the border with Israel.
More than 1.4 million people, or nearly a quarter of the country’s population, have fled their homes in Lebanon, according to an estimate by the United Nations. The Lebanese authorities have said that more than 2,600 people have been killed since last October, when Hezbollah started firing missiles and drones at Israel in support of the militant group Hamas in Gaza and Israeli forces responded with airstrikes and assassinations.
The Israeli military said Sunday on social media that it struck Hezbollah facilities for manufacturing and storing weapons in the Dahiya, a dense set of neighborhoods south of Beirut that is a Hezbollah stronghold. Israel also said its operations had killed around 70 Hezbollah members over the past day and that on Friday it had killed two local Hezbollah commanders who operated around the town of Bint Jbeil, which is close to the border.
There was no independent confirmation of the statement.
The invasion and Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have eliminated much of Hezbollah’s top leadership, but they have not stopped the group from launching cross-border attacks.
Israel’s military said that a total of 90 projectiles were fired at Israel on Sunday in two separate waves. It said that some had been intercepted, while a drone strike hit in the Bar-Lev industrial area, about 13 miles south of the border. The statement gave no details of whether it caused any damage.
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