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BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than 10,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed in Lebanon since a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the head of the country's National Council for Scientific Research said on Wednesday.
"Since the current ceasefire... we have witnessed 5,386 housing units that were completely destroyed, and 5,246 housing units damaged," CRNS chief Chadi Abdallah told a news conference broadcast by local media.
Israel has kept up heavy airstrikes despite the April 17 ceasefire, and Israeli soldiers are operating inside an Israeli-declared "yellow line", which runs around 10 kilometres north of the Israel-Lebanon border where troops have been carrying out broad demolition operations.
Lebanon's Health Minister Rakan Nassereddine told a press conference on Tuesday that since the ceasefire, "380 people have been killed and 1,122 wounded".
Nassereddine decried a "systematic, ongoing attack on civilians", and described the ceasefire as "fragile and ineffective".
Save the Children said in a statement that "more than four children have been killed or injured every day on average in Lebanon in the first 25 days" of the truce.
The overall toll from Israeli attacks since the war erupted on March 2 has reached 2,882 people, including 279 women and 200 children, Nassereddine said.
Some 108 emergency and health workers were also among the dead, he noted, before the latest civil defence deaths.
"It's a massacre... there are no armed men or fighters in these (ambulance) vehicles, just paramedics, medical equipment and wounded," he added.
Hizbollah chief Naim Qassem vowed to turn the battlefield into "hell" for Israeli forces, and insisted his Iran-backed group's weapons would not be up for discussion at the talks on Thursday and Friday, after the US had called for its disarmament.
Israel has intensified its attacks on south Lebanon, where it continues to trade fire with Hizbollah despite the ceasefire. Under the truce terms released by Washington, Israel reserves the right to act against imminent threats.
