\n Lebanon's health minister said on Friday that Israeli strikes killed more than 160 rescuers and health workers in a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, calling it a \"war crime\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The total number of rescuers and \"health sector workers killed has so far has reached 163, with 272 others wounded,\" Firass Abiad told reporters during a press conference detailing \"damage caused by Israeli attacks on the health sector in Lebanon\".\n<\/p>\n
\n He said the attacks were \"direct and intentional\", and \"a war crime\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Authorities, he said, were unable to retrieve the bodies of eight rescuers killed in Israeli attacks on their three ambulances, near border villages where intense fighting has erupted following Israeli ground incursions.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The Israeli enemy has been refusing to even allow us to retrieve the bodies... for the past two weeks,\" Abiad said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Six firefighters were still buried under the rubble in a another south Lebanon location, he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Israel has targeted 158 ambulances, 57 fire trucks, and 15 rescue vehicles, Abiad added.\n<\/p>\n
\n In a video on Thursday, the Israeli military accused the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee rescuers of harbouring fighters and weapons in their ambulances, accusations the group denies.\n<\/p>\n
\n The rescuers are active mostly in Lebanon's south and east and Beirut's southern suburbs, Hezbollah bastions under heavy bombardment. They have been repeatedly targeted by Israel, leaving many of their paramedics killed and injured.\n<\/p>\n
\n On September 23, Israel escalated an air campaign in Lebanon and later announced ground incursions, following a year of limited cross-border clashes with Hezbollah which said it was acting in support of Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza war.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since then, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 1,580 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lebanon's health minister said on Friday that Israeli strikes killed more than 160 rescuers and health workers in a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, calling it a \"war crime\". The total number of rescuers and \"health sector workers killed has so far has reached 163, with 272 others wounded,\" Firass Abiad told reporters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-137522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n