Israeli military raids killed at least seven people in Lebanon on Sunday, including a child and two elderly people, as fighting with Hezbollah continued to ripple across the country. The latest deaths added to a widening civilian toll even as attention also turned to US-Iran talks in Switzerland.
Deaths reported in Sahmar and Tyre
Lebanon’s National News Agency said a child, a woman and two elderly people were killed in the town of Sahmar in the Bekaa Valley. Further south, two Palestinian people were killed in the Rashidieh refugee camp in Tyre, according to the agency.
The Israel Defense Forces told CNN it was “not familiar with any IDF activity in these places” since midnight Sunday local time. The conflicting accounts came amid continued cross-border violence tied to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Palestinian camps face growing exposure
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been caught in the middle of the fighting for months. After hostilities flared between Israel and Hezbollah in early March, Palestinian communities in refugee camps along Lebanon’s south were among those “most exposed to military activity,” according to the nonprofit American Near East Refugee Aid, or Anera.
Anera estimates that about 222,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon today. Many arrived during al-Nakba in 1948, when more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes after the 1948/49 war in what is now Israel.
People staying in camps around Tyre, including Rashidieh, Burj El Shemali and El Buss, have faced “recurring insecurity, nearby strikes and periods of isolation,” Anera said in a report published on Thursday.
The organization added that “for Palestinian communities already living under prolonged precarity, the war has stripped away any sense of security.”
CNN’s Dana Karni contributed reporting.
