ISRAELI air strikes pounded areas across Lebanon, killing at least 21 people, officials said today.

At least 15 people were killed in the southern town of Qana where Israeli bombardments in previous conflicts are seared into local memory.

Elsewhere in the south, a city’s mayor was among the dead in an Israeli strike that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting co-ordinating relief efforts.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes. 

Video footage at the scene in Qana showed several flattened buildings and others with their top floors collapsed. Rescue workers carried away the remains of dead people and used a bulldozer to remove rubble, as they searched for more victims.

In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more people, including four UN peacekeepers. 

During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel claimed at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

Mayor Mohammed Krasht said: “Qana always gets its share,” referring to the town’s grim history.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, meanwhile accused Israel of “intentionally targeting” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed.

“What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?” he asked in a statement.

The Israeli military said that it targeted Hezbollah command centres and weapons facilities that had been embedded in civilian areas of Nabatiyeh in Wednesday’s strikes, without providing evidence for its claim.

Israel also resumed its barrage on Beirut’s southern suburbs after a six-day pause, hitting what it said was an arms warehouse under an apartment building, without providing evidence. 

The strikes on southern Beirut came after Mr Mikati said the United States had given him assurances that Israel would curb its strikes on the capital.

The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on the social media platform X ahead of the strike in Beirut, but air strikes reportedly began less than an hour after the notice.

In Nabatiyeh, more than half a dozen strikes hit the city and surrounding areas, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which said at least six people were killed and 43 wounded, including the city’s mayor Ahmad Kahil.

UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called reports of Mr Kahil’s death “alarming.”

“This attack follows other incidents in which civilians and civilian infrastructure have been targeted across Lebanon,” she said.