No less than 15 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Barja, south of Beirut, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

This happened after a strike hit the coastal area of Barja, 20 kilometres south of Beirut.

Among them was a Hezbollah official who was in an apartment. The building collapsed.

Lebanese security sources said the Hezbollah official who was killed had been in charge of distributing money to followers of the movement who the fighting has displaced.

Meanwhile, earlier, an Israeli airstrike targeted an apartment in the Jiyeh coastal area, 23 kilometres south of Beirut, killed one person and wounded 20 others.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said in a preliminary report, according to the state-run National News Agency (NNA).

“An Israeli air raid targeted a residential apartment in a building in the town of Jiyeh,’’ where witnesses said a large plume of grey smoke was covering the area.

Pictures on social media showed a building with an apartment that was totally destroyed.

Local media reports said the dead person was a Hezbollah member.

This is the second Israeli airstrike to target Jiyeh since Israel started carrying out massive strikes and ground attacks against Hezbollah posts and their residential areas in September.

Israel is said to have destroyed dozens of Lebanese towns and villages.

Dozens of towns and villages in Lebanon have suffered severe levels of destruction as part of Israel’s offensive against the Hezbollah militia.

The state-run Lebanese news agency NNA reported on Tuesday that entire streets or neighbourhoods in 37 towns have been obliterated.

The report stated that 40,000 houses and apartments have been destroyed, with the country’s southern region particularly affected.

At least 29 villages have been “completely destroyed’’ by Israel in a 120-kilometre strip across the south of the country from the Naqoura region in the west to Shebaa.

In the Hasbaya district in the east, Mohamed Chamseddine, research director at the Lebanese polling institute Information International, said in an interview with the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

The Israeli military emphasises that it only targets buildings used by Hezbollah, the Shiite militia allied with Iran, as hideouts or weapons depots.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war last year, Hezbollah has regularly fired rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to leave their homes.

Following almost a year of cross-border exchanges, Israel ramped up its campaign against Hezbollah to facilitate the evacuees’ return, launching a ground offensive in Lebanon in October and intensifying its airstrikes across the country.

The conflict has had a devastating impact on the humanitarian situation in Lebanon.

According to the World Food Programme, some 1.4 million of the nation’s six million people have been affected by the fighting.

More than 800,000 people have been displaced within the country due to the attacks, according to the UN, though the Lebanese interim government recently put the number of internally displaced persons at 1.2 million.

The UN observer mission, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), stationed in the south of the country, has also reported severe destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Some roads have become impassable, according to a statement by the UN peacekeepers.

They said that peacekeeping forces are clearing debris and repairing roads to ensure safe supply routes to their bases.

So far, more than 3,000 people have been killed and around 13,500 injured since the outbreak of the conflict, with almost a quarter of the dead being women or minors.

This is according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and Hezbollah members in its statistics.

(dpa/NAN)