Yoopya with Associated Press
BEIRUT (AP) — Israeli airstrikes hit central Beirut on Thursday evening, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens, Lebanon’s health ministry said, the latest in Israel’s broadening campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
The Health Ministry said the strikes badly damaged a residential building and caused another to completely collapse.
But it comes as Israel has broadened its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and launched a ground invasion there.
Israeli strikes have been far more common in Beirut’s tightly packed southern suburbs, where Hezbollah bases many operations, but rare deeper inside the Lebanese capital.
There was no immediate statement from the Israeli military on the rare strikes inside Lebanon’s capital that rocked two different neighborhoods in the city’s west, sending smoke rising from the rubble of damaged buildings.
The fighting has boiled over into all-out war in recent weeks, with Israel carrying out waves of heavy strikes across Lebanon and launching a ground invasion. Hezbollah has expanded its rocket fire to more populated areas deeper inside Israel, causing few casualties but disrupting daily life.
Further south in Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping force said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers. The attack drew widespread condemnation and prompted the Italian Defense Ministry to summon Israel’s ambassador in protest.
Before the Beirut strikes, Lebanon’s crisis response unit said Israeli shellfire and airstrikes over the past 24 hours had killed 28 people and wounded 113, bringing the total to 2,169 killed and 10,212 people wounded in Lebanon since the war erupted last October. At least four people were killed Thursday in the eastern Bekaa Valley, Lebanese health authorities said.
Hezbollah attacks have killed 28 civilians in northern Israel since the war began, as well as 39 Israeli soldiers, including both in northern Israel since last October and in southern Lebanon since Israel’s invasion.
Even as attention has shifted to Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran, Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 27 people on Thursday, Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted Palestinian militants, but people sheltering there said the strike hit a meeting of aid workers.
Israeli strikes hit central Beirut
Witnesses reported a large number of ambulances and people gathering around damaged buildings at the two sites that were hit in central Beirut.
The Israeli military, which has struck Hezbollah targets in the densely populated southern suburbs many times in recent weeks, rarely attacks inside the Lebanese capital.
An Associated Press photographer in the neighborhood of Ras al-Nabaa said an airstrike appeared to have hit the lower half of an eight-story apartment building, setting off a series of loud explosions. A second Israeli strike, in the western area of Burj Abi Haidar, collapsed an entire building, which was engulfed in flames.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said 11 people were killed and 48 others wounded, without elaborating on their identities. It was not immediately clear what was targeted. Recent Israeli airstrikes in neighborhoods adjoining Beirut have killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and other senior commanders.
Israeli ground troops invaded southern Lebanon on Sept. 30 and have been battling the militants in deadly combat since.
Israel says the ground invasion, which has so far focused on a narrow strip along the border, is aimed at pushing the militants back so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to their homes in the north. The fighting has displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of Hamas and the Palestinians, drawing Israeli airstrikes in retaliation.
Hezbollah kept up rocket fire into Israel on Thursday, setting off air raid sirens in parts of northern Israel. Several drones heading toward Israel were intercepted, the military said.
Iran — which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups across the region — launched some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in retaliation for the killing of top Hamas and Hezbollah militants.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday that its response to the Iranian missile attack will be “lethal” and “surprising,” without providing further details, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with President Joe Biden.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israel’s security cabinet would convene Thursday night to discuss the country’s response.
UN peacekeepers caught in intensified fighting in Lebanon
The U.N. peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL said in a statement that its headquarters and nearby positions “have been repeatedly hit.” It said the Israeli army also fired on a nearby bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, damaging vehicles and a communication system. It said an Israeli drone was seen flying to the bunker’s entrance.
The Israeli military acknowledged opening fire at a U.N. base in southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had ordered the peacekeepers to “remain in protected spaces.”
UNIFIL, which has more than 10,000 peacekeepers from dozens of countries, was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion. The United Nations expanded its mission following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, allowing peacekeepers to patrol a buffer zone set up along the border.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of establishing militant infrastructure along the border in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war. It has warned people to evacuate from dozens of communities in southern Lebanon, many of which are outside the buffer zone.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, sharply condemned Israeli strikes that hit UNIFIL positions as “an inadmissible act, for which there is no justification.”
From Italy, which has about 1,000 soldiers deployed as part of UNIFIL, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her government formally protested to Israeli authorities. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto went further, claiming Israel deliberately targeted the UNIFIL base in southern Lebanon in strikes that “could constitute war crimes.”
Several other countries, including France and Jordan denounced the Israeli attacks.
The U.N. peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said last week that peacekeepers would stay in their positions on Lebanon’s southern border despite Israel’s request to vacate areas before it launched its ground operation against Hezbollah. Crosetto endorsed that, saying that “the U.N. and Italy cannot accept orders from the Israeli government.”
Aid group says staff killed in strike on school
The Israeli strike in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed 27 people, including a child and seven women, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought.
An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces.
The Israeli military said it targeted a militant command and control center inside the school, without providing evidence. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools that were turned into shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of taking cover in them.
Witnesses said the strike occurred while school managers were meeting with representatives of an aid group in a room normally used by Hamas-run police who provide security. They said there were no police in the room at the time.
The Palestinian branch of Terre des Hommes, a Swiss aid group, said in a statement that members of one of its children’s health teams were killed in the strike, without specifying how many.
“There were no militants. There was no Hamas,” said Iftikhar Hamouda, who had fled from northern Gaza earlier in the war.
“We headed to tents. They bombed the tents … In the streets, they bombed us. In the markets, they bombed us. In the schools, they bombed us,” she said. “Where should we go?”
The Hamas-run government operated a civilian police force numbering in the tens of thousands. They largely vanished from the streets after the start of the war as Israel targeted them with airstrikes, but plainclothes Hamas security personnel still exert control over most areas.
Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces more than a year after the Palestinian militants’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that ignited the war.
The militants stormed into Israel in that attack, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
BY WAFAA SHURAFA, BILAL HUSSEIN AND SAMY MAGDY