BEIRUT — Israel launched dozens of intense air strikes on farming villages in northeastern Lebanon on Friday, killing at least 52 people and injuring many more, the Lebanese Ministry of Health reported.

Hospital officials said Palestinians found the bodies of 25 people killed in central Gaza during Israeli airstrikes that began on Thursday.

The latest violence comes against the backdrop of a renewed diplomatic push by the Biden administration to reach temporary ceasefire agreements days before the US election. Israel has stepped up attacks on Hamas’ remaining fighters in Gaza, devastating areas in the north and raising fears that humanitarian conditions for civilians still there will worsen.

After targeting smaller southern border villages in Lebanon where Hezbollah has been operating in recent weeks, Israel has expanded its attacks in recent weeks to larger urban centers such as the town of Baalbek, home to 80,000 people. Iran-backed Hezbollah doubles as a major political party and social services provider in Lebanon.

Immediately after the Israeli attack that triggered the Hamas-led war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets, unmanned aerial vehicles, and missiles from Lebanon to Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Cross-border clashes that lasted for a year turned into all-out war on October 1, when Israeli forces launched a ground operation into Southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006.

In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where small villages, olive groves and wineries nestled among the country’s mountain ranges had largely escaped the worst Israeli bombardment until last month, Israel launched a series of heavy airstrikes on Friday, killing at least 52 people and forcing more families to flee. . fleeing with everything they could carry, sending thick clouds of smoke onto the horizon.

Lebanese lawmaker representing the region, Hussein Haj Hassan, said Israeli airstrikes intensified in and around the northeastern city of Baalbek after Israel ordered an evacuation this week, causing 60,000 people to flee and evacuate nearby villages.

Rescuers searched for survivors after airstrikes killed nine people and destroyed a building housing 20 people in the town of Younine. Israeli strikes killed 12 people in the town of Amhaz and 31 in at least a dozen villages in northeastern Lebanon, bringing the total death toll to 52, the Health Ministry said. The ministry added that 72 people were injured in the bombardment.

No statement was made from Israel regarding the deadly attacks.

In Lebanon’s capital, Israeli planes bombed the southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight and into the early hours of Friday for the first time in four days, sparking panic after a rare lull. The Israeli army, which warned residents to evacuate at least nine points in Dahiyeh, said that Hezbollah hit weapons production facilities and command centers.

There were no reports of casualties from Dahiyeh, where fear of Israeli bombings caused a mass population influx every night.

Bulldozers moved through clouds of dust and smoke on Friday, clearing debris from pulverized roads where Israeli warplanes had reduced dozens of buildings to skeletal ruins.

Mid-rise apartment blocks that used to house families and businesses were left open to the breeze, walls blown away and furniture buried. Hezbollah supporters in various locations raised the group’s bright yellow banner over the rubble.

More than 2,897 people have been killed and more than 13,150 injured in Lebanon since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah broke out last year, according to a Health Ministry report. Except for Friday’s rising death toll. Health officials say a quarter of those who died were women and children.

Overall, United Nations agencies estimate that Israel’s land invasion and bombardment of Lebanon displaced 1.4 million people. About 60,000 people living in Israel’s northern communities near Lebanon have also been displaced for more than a year.

Hezbollah continued to fire rockets into northern Israel on Thursday, when rockets launched from Lebanon hit agricultural fields, killing seven people, including four Thai agricultural workers.

Israel continues to bomb Gaza on Friday; Airstrikes hit the Nuseyrat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 21 Palestinians, including an 18-month-old child and his 10-year-old sister, according to medical data. Officials of the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Israeli strikes also hit a motorcycle in Zuwaida and a house in Deir al-Balah, killing four more people, bringing the total death toll in Gaza to 25 on Friday, hospital officials said.

Israel said it targeted Hamas infrastructure and a militant operating near the Nuseyrat refugee camp, but did not comment on attacks outside the camp. He said he was aware of reports of civilian casualties and was investigating. In a separate announcement from the army, it was stated that Izzeddin Kassab, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, and his deputy Ayman Ayesh were killed in an air strike on a vehicle in the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Hamas confirmed the death of Kassab, who was not widely known to the public. Israel claimed that he was a coordinator among militant groups in Gaza.

As US diplomats left the region this week after intense talks with Israeli officials, there was no sign of progress on a ceasefire in either Lebanon or Gaza.

Hamas on Friday doubled down on its long-standing demands for a permanent ceasefire and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, saying Israel had offered only a temporary pause in the fighting and an increase in aid shipments in recent talks. There has been no statement from Israel yet.

“The proposals do not meet the comprehensive needs of the Palestinian people in terms of security, stability, aid and reconstruction,” senior Hamas official Bassem Naem told Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV. Associated Press.

Israel’s violent war in Gaza has led to the deaths of more than 43,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants but say more than half of the deaths in the region are women and children.

Israeli forces have recently shifted their attention to Hamas militants who they say have regrouped in northern Gaza, renewing an offensive that has left tens of thousands of people trapped under intense bombardment without enough food and water.

Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly delayed the emergency polio vaccination campaign, which the World Health Organization finally announced plans to launch on Saturday (but only in Gaza City). As Israel tightens the siege, towns further north such as Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun remain inaccessible.

The UN and other humanitarian agencies said on Friday that “the situation unfolding in northern Gaza is apocalyptic” as Israel refuses to provide humanitarian aid to the area, carrying out military raids on hospitals, airstrikes on shelters and blocking Palestinian rescue teams trying to help survivors. He warned about. After Israeli attacks.