Rescuers use excavators to remove rubble from a destroyed building that was hit Tuesday evening by an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Barja, Lebanon, Wednesday, November 6, 2024. (Hassan Ammar/AP )

BARJA, Lebanon — Lebanese rescuers pulled 30 bodies from the rubble after a late-night Israeli strike on an apartment building in the town of Barja, Lebanon’s Civil Defense said Wednesday, as wars in the Middle East escalate continue without any sign of appeasement.

It remains unclear whether there were any survivors or bodies still trapped under debris after Tuesday night’s airstrike, which came without warning. There was no statement from the Israeli military and the target of the strike was also unknown.

Barja, a town just north of the port city of Sidon in central Lebanon, has not been regularly targeted so far in the conflict.

“Something pulled me very hard, then the explosion happened,” said Moussa Zahran, who was at home with his wife and son when the building was hit. He said he couldn’t see but began digging through the rubble until he found his wife and son – alive but injured – and pulled them out. Both are still in the hospital, he said.

Another resident of the building, Muhyiddin Al-Qalaaji, said he was at work when the strike took place and heard the news from his wife who called him frantically.

“There are a lot of dead and injured,” he said Wednesday morning as he salvaged what he could of the family’s belongings.

Civil defense official Mostafa Danaj said some neighbors reported people were still missing.

Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militant group have clashed for more than a year, since Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border shortly after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian Hamas from Gaza into the southern Israel sparked the ongoing war there.

The war on the Lebanese front has intensified significantly since mid-September, with Israel launching a massive aerial bombardment and ground invasion.

Several large airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early Thursday, including one on a site adjacent to Lebanon’s only international airport. The Israeli military had previously issued an evacuation notice for the site stating that there were “Hezbollah facilities” without providing further details. No casualties were immediately reported.

A rocket attack killed a foreign worker near the northern Israeli city of Acre on Wednesday, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service. The nationality of the worker was not immediately known.

Sirens sounded across northern and central Israel earlier in the day, including in the populated Tel Aviv metropolitan area, as Hezbollah launched 10 rockets. A large portion of a rocket hit a parked car in the central Israeli town of Ra’anana. Rockets also hit an open area near Israel’s main airport, Israeli media reported, although the airport said flights were operating normally.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a surprise announcement that sparked protests across the country. Gallant’s replacement is Foreign Minister Israel Katz, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran minister.

Israeli police said they arrested 40 people during Tuesday night’s protests when demonstrators blocked Israel’s main highway in Tel Aviv. Thousands of people gathered in front of the Israeli Parliament on Wednesday evening to protest Gallant’s firing.

Netanyahu has repeatedly disagreed over the war in Gaza, but the prime minister had avoided letting go of his rival ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, in which former President Donald Trump made a strong comeback.

Gallant had rebuffed some of Netanyahu’s demands during indirect negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire and the release of hostages, and was seen as more open to at least a temporary truce.

The Hamas attack that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and Palestinian militants kidnapped another 250 that day. Around a hundred hostages are still in Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.

The Israeli offensive has killed more than 43,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say that more than half of those killed were women and children.

Since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 injured in Lebanon, about a quarter of them women and children, the Health Ministry reported.

Hezbollah air attacks have so far killed 73 people in Israel, including 30 soldiers, according to local authorities.

Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.