Official: 28 farm workers killed by Israeli airstrike

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An Israeli airstrike hit dozens of farm workers loading vegetables near the Lebanon-Syria border on Friday, officials said.

Ali Yaghi, a Lebanese civil defense official at the scene, said at least 28 people were killed.

The Israeli army said it had attacked two buildings where it suspected weapons were being stored, and it was checking reports that it had hit a vegetable storehouse and civilians.

Yaghi said at least 12 workers were wounded and some likely were buried under rubble. A bulldozer was brought to the site to try to uncover survivors, he said.

The attack occurred when five Syrian refrigerator trucks arrived at a vegetable warehouse to load peaches and apples for the Syrian market, drivers and witnesses said. They said there were about 150 people there at the time.

Yaghi said civilian pickup trucks and a Lebanese ambulance hauled the laborers, some killed by shrapnel or flying rocks, to the Syrian city of Homs. Roads to hospitals in Lebanon were cut off by Israeli airstrikes earlier in the day.

The attack occurred near the town of al-Qaa, about six miles from Hermel, a Hezbollah stronghold hit by at least three Israeli airstrikes since fighting began 24 days ago.

The site run by a Lebanese company employed some 60 workers. It was unclear how many were there at the time of the attack.

Hermel was largely cut off from the rest of the country after Israel destroyed a bridge on the Orontes River in the Bekaa Valley.