An Israeli attack on a house in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed at least 19 people, including six women and five children, local officials said.
Suad Hammoud told the BBC that the dead included former school principal Ahmed Izzedin and three generations of his family, who all lived in a three-storey house in the village of Te Fata.
She added that the village’s imam, Sheikh Abdo Abo Rayya, and two passers-by were killed while walking near the house when the attack occurred.
The Israeli military has not yet commented on the incident but has repeatedly said it will take measures to mitigate harm to civilians.
It has launched thousands of airstrikes across Lebanon over the past four weeks, allegedly targeting operatives, infrastructure and weapons of the armed group Hezbollah.
Ms Hammoud said Wednesday’s strike in Te Fakhta came after the funeral of Ahmed Ezzedin’s cousin and brother-in-law Koder, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the neighboring village of Marwaniyah on Monday. .
But she said a report by the state-run National News Agency (NNA) that the strike was aimed at holding a wake to express condolences for mourners was incorrect.
“Only the residents of the house were there. They came back after the funeral. There were no strangers there,” she said.
“People realized that circumstances did not allow them to express their condolences in person, so there were no longer wakes in the village.”
She said that living with Mr Ezzedin in the house were his wife, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law and grandson.
Mr Ezzedine lived on the ground floor while his children and their families lived upstairs. But it is believed everyone was on the ground floor when the house was hit.
A video posted on social media shortly after showed Thick smoke billows from the hillside of Tefakhta, where the house is located.
On Wednesday morning, Lebanese television broadcast A pile of rubble and twisted metal once formed the floors above.
Lebanon’s health ministry has not yet reported how many people were killed in the attack. But Ms. Hammoud and Teffahta’s social Facebook account The death toll is 19.
The Facebook account named the five children as Mohammed Yassin, Ahmed Yassin and Malak Ezzedine, Sara and Mohammed Mohammed Kinyar, named six women Zaineb, Malak, Hadiya, Fadiya, Fatima Ezzedine ) and Zaina Taleb.
Ms Hammoud said Sheikh Abolaya was walking near the house when the strike occurred.
“The houses in the village are not isolated, they are very close to each other,” she said, adding that two other men identified on the Facebook account, Rabih Younes and Hussein Saleh ) may also be killed by passers-by.
A relative of Sheikh Abo Rayya told the BBC that the strike took place at around 17:10 local time, about 15 minutes after the funeral.
They insisted the chief was not the target and noted that the house had been “destroyed”.
“Sheikh Abdul has just passed by the house. He is not inside. He is heading to the mosque with his companions. They are going to pray,” they said.
“The Imam was going down the mountain when a pressure wave blew him away. He did not die immediately. He was injured and died in hospital about five hours later.
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Office received reports that 12 women and two children were among them Israeli air strikes on a four-story residential building in the northern Lebanese town of Aittu, killing 23 people.
It called for an investigation into the attack and expressed concerns about international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction and proportionality.
The Israeli military said it “attacked targets of the Hezbollah terrorist organization”.
Israel has launched air strikes and ground incursions against Hezbollah after the war in Gaza sparked nearly a year of cross-border fighting and said it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by rocket attacks.
On October 8, 2023, the day after its ally Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of the Palestinians.
Since then, more than 2,500 people have died in Lebanon, 1,900 of them in the past five weeks, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Israeli authorities said 59 people had been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.
