Death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon exceeds 3,000: Health Ministry | Israel attacks Lebanon news

According to the ministry, 589 women and at least 185 children have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the past 13 months.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have now killed more than 3,000 people in the 13 months since fighting broke out between Hezbollah and Israel along the southern Lebanese and northern Israeli borders, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

The ministry said late Monday that 3,002 people had been killed and 13,492 injured since Israel's “aggression” against Lebanon began.

According to the figures, 589 women and at least 185 children were among the 3,002 people killed so far, according to the ministry.

While Israel claims that hundreds of Hezbollah fighters have been killed in its attacks, witnesses and independent reports from bombed communities across Lebanon testify to the high number of civilian casualties caused by widespread and indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, said last week that at least one child per day had been killed in Lebanon over the past month.

“At least one child has been killed and 10 injured every day since October 4 this year,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said.

“Thousands more children who have survived many months of constant bombings physically unscathed are now deeply affected by the violence and chaos around them,” the agency said.

The rising death toll comes as an estimated 1.2 million of Lebanon's 5.8 million population have been forcibly displaced from cities, towns and villages and neighborhoods in the capital Beirut, which Israel has repeatedly bombed and continues to issue eviction orders.

In Israel, 72 people have reportedly been killed in Hezbollah attacks since October last year, including at least 30 Israeli soldiers killed in fighting with the Lebanese armed group. More than 60,000 people have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel.

An end to the fighting appears to be a long way off given the rising number of deaths and the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure and civilian property.

On Friday, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati accused Israel of blocking any progress in ceasefire negotiations with Hezbollah.

“Israeli statements and diplomatic signals received by Lebanon confirm Israel's stubbornness in rejecting the proposed solutions and insisting on the killing and destruction approach,” he said.

The AFP news agency reviewed video footage on Monday that showed massive explosions in a border village in southern Lebanon, where a local official said hundreds of homes had been destroyed by Israel since last year.

Video widely shared online showed more than a dozen simultaneous detonations that shook Meiss el-Jabal and leveled Lebanese homes.

Similar aerial photos of house demolitions have been captured from several border villages, including Mhaibib and Odaisseh, since Israel sent ground troops to southern Lebanon in late September, AFP reports.

In the videos widely shared online, houses covering lush hillsides can be seen crumbling into a cloud of gray dust.

Israeli troops have blown up buildings in at least seven border villages over the past month, according to Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA).

Monday's video from Meiss el-Jabal showed large explosions near an abandoned hospital in the village, Mayor Abdul-Monhem Choukair said.

“Seventy percent of Meiss el-Jabal is destroyed,” the mayor said, adding that “the goal of the Israeli enemy is systematic destruction.”