Israeli strikes overnight destroy central Nabatieh marketplace | Israel targets Red Cross team in Surubbin | Battle continues at Blida on the border

Saturday night saw Israel conduct airstrikes on the main market area in Nabatieh, causing massive destruction that eyewitnesses described to Mada Masr as surpassing the damage incurred in the 2006 war, when the market was also targeted amid Israel’s invasion.

At least five people are confirmed to have been killed in the strike so far, with 13 more injured and around seven people missing, a member of one of the emergency response teams at the scene, Haitham Abu Zad, told Mada Masr.

Airstrikes also targeted neighborhoods around Saida, where many of those displaced from the south in recent months have rented accommodation in recent weeks.

The Nabatieh market, which spans around 400 square meters, was a regular meeting place for residents of the city who shopped there for everything, from fruits and vegetables to dessert to shoes, said a Mada Masr correspondent in the area. Several residential buildings and medical clinics were also in the vicinity and were damaged in last night’s strike.

The market has also been a focal point for efforts to distribute bread and other essential food supplies to the remaining residents of the city, which has been exposed to multiple airstrikes since the beginning of the month.

Nabatieh mayor Sadeq Eissa told Mada Masr that in the two airstrikes, the level of destruction on the market surpassed that suffered during the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, comparing the attack to the scenes coming out of Gaza.

Nabatieh, the principal city of Nabatieh Governorate in Lebanon’s south, has been targeted daily with airstrikes since Israel escalated its aggression on Lebanon in mid-September.

An Israeli drone strike on Sunday also targeted the Sharhabil area on the outskirts of Saida for the first time since mid-September, and four Red Cross paramedics were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on the village of Surubbin.

Only 2,500 out of around 100,000 residents currently remain in Nabatieh, Eissa estimated, adding that the municipality would find a new site from which to continue its efforts to support those staying in the city, where supplies are few.

The Nabatieh Traders Association issued a statement condemning the attack on the market, which they described as storing “the heritage, memories and efforts of the city’s people and the surrounding area,” adding that it “was never a military site.”

Within hours of the destruction of Nabatieh’s market, airstrikes were conducted on Sharhabil and Barja — sites to which many of those displaced from the governorates of Nabatieh and Sur have fled to escape heavier bombardment across the south.

At least three people were injured in the strike on the Sharhabil area in Bqosta city in Saida, which targeted a single apartment in a residential building in the early hours of Sunday for reasons that remain unclear. Residents drove the injured to a nearby hospital, eyewitnesses told Mada Masr. The mayor told local media that over 5,800 displaced people have recently sought shelter in Sharhabil after leaving more frequently targeted areas in the south.

Slightly further north of Saida, where four people were killed and 18 more injured on Saturday in an airstrike on the village of Barja. The Barja crisis cell, a unit formed by local authorities to respond to the conditions amid the war, noted in a statement on Saturday the danger of airstrikes on the area that has received more than 23,000 people displaced from south Lebanon so far.

The statement called on “anyone who is targeted or exposed to danger to stay away from the town in order to preserve its security and the safety of its people,” referring to Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance commanders whom Israel has recently been targeting more intensely in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, displacement from the south is ongoing. On Saturday, the Israeli military ordered residents of 23 villages in southern Lebanon to immediately evacuate to the north of the Awali River, claiming that Hezbollah is active in these villages.

At the southern border, Hezbollah fighters continued to clash with the Israeli military’s attempts to penetrate Lebanese territory. Amid the battle at Blida that began on Friday, Hezbollah fighters clashed “at zero distance” with Israeli infantry forces who tried to infiltrate from the Canaan Heights area in the village, said the organization. They also targeted artillery shells toward a gathering of Israeli soldiers in Maroun al-Ras, which lies to the east of Blida.

Blida and the village of Maroun al-Ras have been focal points for the Israeli forces’ attempts to invade Lebanon, with Hezbollah deploying explosive devices, rocket barrages, artillery fire, and now direct clashes to repel Israel’s attempted incursions, which have been ongoing for nearly two weeks.

Hezbollah also noted that its fighters are still engaged in clashes with Israeli forces that have been trying to infiltrate through the villages of Ramyeh and Qouzah, saying that they blew up an Israeli military vehicle with a guided missile near the Ramyeh military post.

In Surubbin, south of Nabatieh and around 20 kilometers north of Blida, four Lebanese Red Cross paramedics were injured on Sunday morning after an Israeli airstrike targeted their ambulances just as they arrived near a house in the village that was targeted by an earlier strike. 

A Red Cross statement explained that the strike happened despite the paramedics’ coordination with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to allow the ambulances passage to the village near the border.

UNIFIL sites in southern Lebanon have likewise been targeted by Israeli strikes over recent days. Following the injury of four UNIFIL troops by Israeli fire in two separate incidents last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accused Hezbollah in a phone call with US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Sunday of firing from the vicinity of UNIFIL posts in the south.

Israeli media reported that Israeli soldiers wounded on Sunday on the Lebanese front were transferred to a hospital in Haifa.

The Lebanese group also continued to fire rockets into Israeli territories on Sunday, with sirens sounding in Akka and Nahariya, as well as the industrial area in Kiryat Bialik.