Israeli attacks on Lebanon have now killed more than 3,000 people in the 13 months since fighting erupted between Hezbollah and Israel along the southern Lebanese and northern Israeli border, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health has said.
The ministry said late on Monday that 3,002 have been killed and 13,492 injured since the beginning of Israel’s “aggression” against Lebanon.
The figures show that there were 589 women and at least 185 children 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 attest to the high number of civilian casualties from widespread and indiscriminate Israeli air strikes 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.
“Since October 4 of this year, at least one child has been killed and 10 injured daily,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said.
“Thousands more children who have survived the many months of constant bombings physically unscathed are now acutely distressed by the violence and chaos around them,” the agency said.
The mounting death toll comes as an estimated 1.2 million of Lebanon’s population of 5.8 million have been forcibly displaced from cities, towns and villages as well as neighbourhoods in the capital, Beirut, which Israel has bombed repeatedly and continues to issue forced evacuation orders.
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