CAIRO (Reuters) – Three Lebanese paramedics were killed and two others wounded, one of them critically, in an Israeli attack while they were extinguishing fires in the southern Lebanese town of Faroun, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Saturday.
“The Israeli occupation forces targeted a Lebanese civil defense team while it was dealing with fires that broke out as a result of recent Israeli air strikes,” the ministry said in a statement, explaining that the strike hit a fire truck.
The ministry condemned the attack, describing it as a “blatant blow” to an official Lebanese state apparatus, and the second such attack on an emergency team in less than 12 hours.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Israel had earlier said it had carried out a number of strikes against Hezbollah missile launchers and infrastructure in several locations in southern Lebanon, after the group fired rockets into northern Israel.
Hezbollah issued a statement saying it had fired a “swarm of missiles” in response to the Pharaoh attack, targeting an Israeli military headquarters, causing casualties.
Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has steadily escalated, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border.