'Only we can feel your pain': Lebanon looks like Gaza after Israeli strikes

As Israeli bombs flattened buildings and sent smoke billowing skywards over Lebanon this week, Palestinians in Gaza looked on with both empathy and fear over how the widening war might affect them.

Israel carried out a third day of air strikes against Lebanon on Wednesday,

In a dramatic escalation after nearly a year of cross-border violence, Israeli air raids since Monday killed at least 570 people in Lebanon in the country's deadliest day since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Chadi Nawfal, a 24-year-old resident of Gaza City who said he lost his home in an Israeli strike, told AFP on Wednesday that footage from Lebanon was hard to watch.

"The bloody scenes from Lebanon that we see on our television screens are very harsh images," he told AFP.

"We people in Gaza are the only ones who can currently feel the pain that the Lebanese people are experiencing."

The sustained Israeli aerial assault on Lebanon is the latest in a series of attacks that began last week with coordinated blasts on pagers and walkie-talkies.

The explosions killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000, and were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil among the dead.

Israeli focus moves north

Another strike on the Lebanese capital on Tuesday killed Hezbollah rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi.

Taken together, Israel's onslaught confirmed its Defence Minister Yoav Gallant's claim a week ago that the war's "centre of gravity" was moving northward.

Ayman al Amreiti, another displaced resident of Gaza City, said he was worried the fighting in Lebanon would mean the ongoing war in Gaza gets less global attention.

"The military weight is now shifting to Lebanon, so even the media attention on Gaza has become secondary," the 42-year-old told AFP.

"This encourages the appetite of the occupation (Israel) to commit more crimes."

Israel's military offensive has killed at least 41,495 people in Gaza, mostly civilians,.

'The victims are the people'

There are obvious differences in timeframe and scale, but Umm Munzir Naim, 52, told AFP she could not help but see similarities between the fighting in Lebanon and in Gaza.

"The war against Lebanon is a war like in Gaza. The victims are the people," she said.

"The small, the big, the properties, everything is targeted , humans, trees."

"They say it's against Hamas and Hezbollah, but on the ground it's people who die."

"The outcome, the hope is that any settlement with Hezbollah will also involve Gaza," he said.

"Right now, that is the hope that the children of the Palestinian people are turning to."