Members of the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Authority transport the bodies six Syrian workers, who were killed in an Israeli strike a few kilometers west of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon overnight Friday. (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — The bodies of the six Syrian workers, who were killed in an Israeli strike a few kilometers west of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon overnight on Friday, were transported to Syria on Sunday morning, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.
The strike killed 10 people in total - the deadliest single attack in Lebanon since the start of the conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on Oct. 8.
Vehicles belonging to the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Authority transported the bodies from the Sheikh Ragheb Harb Hospital morgue in Toul. The bodies will be handed over to the Syrian Red Crescent at the Masnaa border crossing.
The six victims have been identified as: Muhannad Ali Al-Hajji, Nazih Jihad Afa Al-Rifai, Muhammad Fawzi Abdul Hasib Al-Adl, Jihad Musa Al-Hassan, Muhammad Hamidi Al-Musa and Abdullah Hussein Al-Musa.
Most of the victims are from the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Damascus, according to the NNA.
Deadly strike
The airstrike, which took place after 1 a.m., targeted a building in an industrial zone between Kfour and Toul, totally destroying it. The blast also caused damage to neighboring houses, according to our correspondent Muntasser Abdallah.
According to a relative of a Syrian family killed in the blast (a woman, her husband and two children), the mother had fled Homs in 2012 because of the Syrian civil war and married in Lebanon. Her children were aged four and one and a half, he told our journalist Lyana Alameddine.
The Israeli army claimed it struck "a Hezbollah weapons warehouse" in Nabatieh during the night, as well as "military structures" belonging to Hezbollah in the Hanine and Maroun al-Ras areas in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.
On Sunday, Nabatieh Imam Sheikh Abdul Hussein Sadik condemned in a statement "the massacre that took place Kfour-Toul area in Nabatieh."
"Its timing in the atmosphere of the ongoing negotiations is nothing but evidence that the [Israeli] government does not care about ending the war of extermination that it continues against the Palestinian people", he added.
The cross-border exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel, which have been almost daily since Oct. 8 October, intensified after the death on 30 July of Hezbollah's military chief, Fouad Shokur, in an Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs, the day before the assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which has been blamed on Israel by Iran and its allies. Tehran and Hezbollah have threatened Israel with reprisals, raising fears of a regional military escalation that international diplomacy is trying to prevent by redoubling efforts to bring about a cease-fire in Gaza.