Israeli strike kills three Lebanese medics, Hezbollah retaliates
By Laila Bassam
CAIRO (Reuters) -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.
The Israeli military said: "Earlier today, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) struck and eliminated terrorists from the Amal terrorist organization that operated within a Hezbollah military structure in the area of Froun in southern Lebanon."
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the 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.
Hezbollah issued a statement, saying it launched a "squadron of missiles" in response to the Faroun attack, targeting an Israeli military headquarters, causing casualties.
Around 140 civilians have been killed by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon since Oct. 8, when hostilities broke out between the Israeli military and Hezbollah in parallel with the war in Gaza.
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.
(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba and Laila Bassam; Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; Writing by Adam Makary; Editing by Mike Harrison, Timothy Heritage and Alistair Bell)
