A village in Lebanon reports that 19 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a family's home

At least 19 people, including six women and five children, were killed in an Israeli attack on a house in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, a local official said.

Suad Hammoud told the BBC that the dead included former school principal Ahmed Ezzedine and three generations of his family, all of whom lived in the three-story building in the village of Teffahta.

The village's imam, Sheikh Abdo Abo Rayya, was killed as he walked near the house with two passers-by at the time of the attack, she added.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the incident but has repeatedly said it is taking measures to reduce harm to civilians.

It has carried out thousands of airstrikes across Lebanon over the past four weeks, reportedly targeting militants, infrastructure and weapons belonging to the armed group Hezbollah.

Ms Hammoud said Wednesday's attack in Teffahta came after the funeral of Ahmed Ezzedine's cousin and brother-in-law Khodr, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the neighboring village of Marwanieh on Monday.

But she said a report by the state-run National News Agency (NNA) that the strike was aimed at encouraging mourners to express condolences was false.

“Only the residents of the house were there. They came back after the funeral. There were no strangers there,” she said.

“People are aware that the circumstances do not allow condolences to be expressed in person, so there is no longer a memorial service in the village.”

Also in the house with Mr. Ezzedine were his wife, his sister, his daughters, his daughter-in-law, his sons-in-law and his grandchildren, she said.

Mr Ezzedine lived on the ground floor while his children and their families lived on the upper floors. However, it is believed everyone was on the ground floor when the house was hit.

Shortly after, a video posted on social media was shown A huge cloud of smoke rose from a hill in Teffahta, where the house stood.

On Wednesday morning, Lebanese television broadcast footage of a pile of rubble and twisted metal that once made up the upper floors.

Lebanon's Health Ministry has not disclosed how many people were killed in the strike. But Ms. Hammoud and Teffahta's community Facebook account put the death toll at 19.

The Facebook account named the five children Mohammed Yassin, Ahmed and Malak Ezzedine and Sara and Mohammed Kinyar and the six women Zaineb, Malak, Hadiya, Fadiya and Fatima Ezzedine and Zaina Taleb.

According to Ms Hammoud, Sheikh Abo Rayya was walking near the house at the time of the strike.

“The houses in the village are not isolated, they are very close to each other,” she said, adding that two other men, identified as Rabih Younes and Hussein Saleh according to the Facebook account, were also likely killed by passers-by in the explosion .

A relative of Sheikh Abo Rayya told the BBC that the strike took place at around 5:10 p.m. local time, about 15 minutes after the funeral.

They insisted the sheikh was not the target and pointed out that the house had been “wiped out.”

“Sheikh Abdo was just passing by the house. He wasn't in the house. He was on the way to the mosque with his companion. They went to prayer,” they said.

“The Imam went down the hill and the blast knocked him out. He didn't die immediately. He was injured and died in hospital about five hours later.”

Last week the UN human rights office received reports that 12 women and two children were among them An Israeli airstrike on a four-story residential building in the northern Lebanese city of Aitou killed 23 people.

It called for an investigation into the attack and raised concerns about international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction and proportionality.

The Israeli military said it had “attacked a target of the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

After nearly a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, Israel launched an airstrike and ground invasion against Hezbollah, saying it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israel's border areas displaced by rocket attacks.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of the Palestinians on October 8, 2023, a day after its ally Hamas's deadly attack on Israel.

More than 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 1,900 in the past five weeks, according to the country's health ministry. According to Israeli authorities, 59 people were killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.