Israeli strike kills three Lebanese medics, Hezbollah retaliates

By Laila Bassam

CAIRO -Three Lebanese paramedics were killed and two others wounded, one critically, in an Israeli attack while they were extinguishing fires in the southern town of Faroun, Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday.

"Israeli forces targeted a team from the Lebanese Civil Defence as they responded to fires sparked by recent Israeli airstrikes," a ministry statement said, specifying that the strike hit a fire truck.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the Israeli attack as a violation of international law and announced an emergency meeting on Monday with Western ambassadors and international organisations to address the ongoing hostilities.

"To date, because of Israel's aggression, 25 paramedics from various ambulance teams have been killed, along with two health workers, and 94 paramedics and health workers have been injured," the health ministry statement added.

The health ministry also condemned the attack as a "blatant strike" on an official Lebanese state apparatus, marking the second such attack on an emergency team in less than 12 hours.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.

It had said earlier that it had carried out a number of strikes against Hezbollah rocket launchers and infrastructure in several locations in southern Lebanon, after the group fired rockets into northern Israel.

Hezbollah issued a statement, saying it launched a "squadron of missiles" in response to the Faroun attack, targeting an Israeli military headquarters, causing casualties.

The intensity of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has ratcheted up steadily, displacing tens of thousands of people on either side of the Lebanese-Israeli frontier.

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