The UN is calling for an investigation into Israel’s deadly airstrike in northern Lebanon

The UN office has called for an investigation into an Israeli air strike that killed 23 people in northern Lebanon on Monday.

Spokesman Jeremy Laurence said the strike, in the predominantly Christian village of Aitou, raised “real concerns” in relation to international law.

Laurence said 12 women and two children were believed to be among the dead when the bomb exploded, which destroyed a building recently rented to a family that had been displaced from the south.

Rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble in Aitou on Tuesday – far from the focus of the conflict so far in south Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley and parts of Beirut.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is yet to comment on the strike.

Elie Alwan, the owner of the house in Aitou, told reporters that it was rented by a family of about 10 people, who were later joined by about 10 others.

Alwan said there were no problems with the tenants until a car arrived at the house on Monday – a driver who was delivering money – when the air strike hit.

Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah members in areas where the group often operates have driven its members to other parts of the country, raising fears across Lebanon that Israeli targets could be anywhere.

A resident of Aitou, Sarkis Alwan, told AFP news that the village “maybe… “Even the villagers who have taken in the displaced people, I think they will say leave,” he said.

Israel showed its determination when it recently attacked residential buildings without warning as it tries to discredit Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel for a year since the day after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

On Thursday night, an Israeli strike hit a building in central Beirut, killing 22 people, according to figures from Lebanon’s health ministry.

Unconfirmed reports say the strike, which came without warning and injured 117, targeted Wafiq Safa, a senior member of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group that is Lebanon’s most powerful military force.

Reports say the strike failed to kill him and Hezbollah has not commented on his condition.

Israel says there is a need to take on Hezbollah so that people in the north of the country can return to their homes.

An airstrike launched by Hezbollah on a military base in northern Israel killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday and seriously wounded seven others – the group’s deadliest strike since Israel launched an airstrike on Lebanon two weeks ago.

Also on Tuesday, the UN refugee agency said more than a quarter of Lebanon is now covered by Israeli military evacuation orders.

“People listen to these calls to leave, and they run away empty-handed,” said the organization’s Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis at a press conference.

Evacuation orders, coupled with Israel’s offensive and bombing campaign, led to a massive exodus of Lebanese people from the affected areas.

More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to the Lebanese government. They fled the villages and big cities in the south, moving north to Beirut, Tripoli and other cities.

Many ended up in unsafe and unsanitary conditions in shelters in and around the capital, where schools and shops were closed to accommodate people.

The sheer volume of people leaving their homes has overwhelmed social services, the mayor’s office told the BBC, leaving thousands homeless on the streets.

Using plans made for previous attacks, in 2006, the municipality had prepared 10% of the actual population, mayor Abdallah Darwich told the BBC last week.

“We didn’t think it would be this big,” he said. “Every day our numbers got bigger and bigger.”

Israeli strikes in Beirut, centered on the southern suburb of Dahieh, have become common over the past three weeks, but the capital has not been hit for nearly five days.

Unconfirmed reports said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stopped targeting Beirut at the urging of the US government.

After the Hezbollah airstrike on Sunday, Netanyahu threatened on Monday night that he would continue to hit the group in Lebanon “without mercy”, including Beirut.

The deputy leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, issued his own threat to Israel on Tuesday, saying that the group has “new figures” to inflict pain on its enemy.

At the same time, Qassem, speaking in a television interview, called for a cessation of hostilities, saying that this is the only solution to the current conflict. “If the Israelis don’t want that, we will continue,” he added.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,309 people over the past year, according to Lebanese government statistics, which do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.

Israel said around 50 Israelis, soldiers and civilians, had been killed.