An Israeli air strike in Lebanon has hit a building that housed Syrian workers, killing 23 of them and wounding eight other people, Lebanon’s state-run news agency said.
The National News Agency said the strike late on Wednesday occurred near the ancient city of Baalbek, in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley running along the Syrian border.
The agency quoted Ali Kassas, mayor of the village of Younine, as saying that the bodies of 23 Syrian citizens were pulled from under the rubble.
Emergency workers arrive at the scene of an Israeli air strike in the town of Maisara, north of Beirut (Bilal Hussein/AP)
He said four Syrians and four Lebanese were wounded.
The Lebanese Red Cross said it recovered nine bodies, while others were recovered by the Hezbollah militant group’s paramedic service and the Lebanese Civil Defence.
Israel has carried out days of heavy strikes across Lebanon targeting what it says are sites belonging to Hezbollah, which has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.
More than 630 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to local health authorities, who say around a quarter were women and children.
Several people have been wounded by shrapnel in Israel.
Lebanon, with a population of around six million, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands who are unregistered – the world’s highest refugee population per capita.