Israeli forces kill 22 Lebanese on pullout deadline

Gaza health ministry says war death toll reaches 47,306

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GAZA STRIP/BURJ AL MULUK:

Israeli army fire killed 22 people in south Lebanon on Sunday including a soldier, health officials said, as residents tried to return home on the day Israel was meant to withdraw under a truce deal.

The withdrawal deadline is part of a ceasefire agreement reached two months ago that ended Israel's war with Iran-backed Hezbollah, which had left the Lebanese militant group weakened.

The deal that took effect on November 27 said the Lebanese army was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period that ends on Sunday.

The parties have traded blame for the delay in implementing the agreement, and on Friday Israel said it would keep troops across the border in south Lebanon beyond the pullout date.

Lebanon's health ministry said on Sunday that Israeli forces opened fire on "citizens who were trying to return to their villages that are still under (Israeli) occupation".

It said 22 residents and a soldier were killed and 124 more wounded. The Lebanese army also announced the soldier's death and said another had been wounded.

AFP journalists said convoys of vehicles carrying hundreds of people, some flying yellow Hezbollah flags, were trying to get to several border villages.

"We will return to our villages and the Israeli enemy will leave," even if it costs lives, said Ali Harb, a 27-year-old trying to go to Kfar Kila.

A joint statement from the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission acknowledged that "as seen tragically this morning, conditions are not yet in place for the safe return of citizens to their villages".

Meanwhile, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday the death toll from the war with Israel had reached 47,306, with numbers rising in spite of a ceasefire as new bodies are found under the rubble.

The ministry said hospitals in the Gaza Strip had received 23 bodies in the past 72 hours -- 14 "recovered from under the rubble", five who "succumbed to their injuries" from earlier in the war, and four new fatalities.

The ministry said the war had also left 111,483 people wounded. AFP