Rescuers pull 30 bodies from a building in central Lebanon hit in an Israeli strike

Lebanese rescuers pulled 30 bodies out of the rubble after a late night Israeli strike on an apartment building in the town of Barja, Lebanon’s Civil Defence service said Wednesday as the Mideast wars press on with no signs of abating.

It remained unclear if there were any survivors or bodies still trapped under the rubble following the Tuesday night airstrike, which came without warning. There was no statement from the Israeli military and the strike’s intended target also was unknown.

Barja, a town just north of the port city of Sidon in central Lebanon, has not been regularly targeted so far in the conflict.

“Something pulled me hard, and then the explosion happened,” said Moussa Zahran, who was at home with his wife and son when the building was hit. He said he couldn’t see but started digging through the rubble until he found his wife and son — alive but injured — and pulled them out. Both are still in the hospital, he said.

Another building resident, Muhyiddin Al-Qalaaji, said he was at work when the strike happened and heard the news from his wife who called him frantically.

“There are many dead and injured,” he said as he carried out what he could salvage of the family’s belongings on Wednesday morning.

Civil defence official Mostafa Danaj said some of the neighbours have reported there are still people missing.

Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militant group have been clashing for more than a year, since Hezbollah started firing rockets across the border soon after the Palestinian Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack from Gaza into southern Israel sparked the ongoing war there.

The war on the Lebanese front has substantially escalated since mid-September, with Israel launching a massive aerial bombardment and ground invasion.

Several large airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early Thursday, including one on a site adjacent to Lebanon’s only international airport. The Israeli military had earlier issued an evacuation notice for the site saying that there were “Hezbollah facilities” there without giving more details. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

On Wednesday, a rocket attack killed a foreign worker near the northern Israeli city of Acre, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service. The worker’s nationality was not immediately known.

Sirens blared across northern and central Israel earlier in the day, including in the populous metropolitan area of Tel Aviv, as Hezbollah launched 10 rockets. A large portion of a rocket slammed into a parked car in the central Israeli city of Raanana. Rockets also struck an open area near Israel’s main airport, Israeli media reported, though the airport said flights were operating as normally.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in a surprise announcement that sparked protests across the country. Gallant’s replacement is Foreign Minister Israel Katz, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister.

Israeli police said they arrested 40 people during protests on Tuesday night when the demonstrators blocked Israel’s main highway in Tel Aviv. Thousands of people gathered outside Israel’s parliament on Wednesday night to protest against Gallant’s firing.

Netanyahu were repeatedly at odds over the war in Gaza but the prime minister had avoided letting go of his rival before the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, in which former President Donald Trump made a comeback victory.

Gallant had pushed back on some of Netanyahu’s demands during indirect negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire and hostage release, and was seen as more open to reaching at least a temporary truce.

The Hamas attack that triggered the war killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and Palestinian militants abducted 250 others that day. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 have been wounded in Lebanon, about a quarter of them women and children, the Health Ministry reported.

Hezbollah continues to send dozens of rockets and drones towards Israel. The projectiles have killed 72 people in Israel so far, including 30 soldiers, according to Netanyahu’s office.

Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.