Lebanon: Bangladeshi worker killed by Israeli air strike in Beirut, gov't says

A Bangladeshi worker died in an air strike in Lebanon, Dhaka's foreign ministry said on Sunday, as the Israeli bombardment hampered efforts to repatriate citizens.

The foreign ministry estimates that between 70,000 and 100,000 of its nationals are working in Lebanon, many as labourers or domestic workers.

The first flights, organised by Dhaka's government with the UN's International Organisation for Migration, brought home scores of Bangladeshis from Beirut last month.

Mohammad Nizam, 31, was killed on Saturday afternoon in a reported strike as he stopped at a coffee shop on the way to work in Beirut, Bangladesh's ambassador to Lebanon, Javed Tanveer Khan said in a statement.

Mohmmad Jalaluddin said his younger brother Nizam had lived in Beirut for more than a decade, and had not been among the estimated 1,800 Bangladeshis who had registered for an evacuation flight home.

"We want to bury him in our ancestral home, and are now waiting for the government's response," Jalaluddin told AFP.

But senior Bangladeshi foreign ministry official Shah Mohammad Tanvir Monsur said it was challenging to arrange a flight into Beirut.

"With the ongoing war, there are hardly any flights from Lebanon to Bangladesh," Monsur said.

"It's becoming increasingly difficult to repatriate our citizens who have registered to return home."

Israel drastically escalated its aggression in Lebanon in September, carrying out airstrikes in the south, a number of Beirut suburbs, the eastern Beqaa Valley and other locations.

The war has killed at least 2,968 people in Lebanon, since it October last year, with the death toll dramatically increasing over the past one and a half months.

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