Israeli airstrikes hit central Beirut and southern suburbs, targeting Hezbollah, multiple civilians killed or wounded as Lebanon faces growing displacement
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike hit an apartment in central Beirut on Wednesday, state media reported, the second targeting of the heart of the Lebanese capital since the latest war with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.
Israel, which kept up strikes targeting Hezbollah despite a 2024 ceasefire, has since launched attacks across Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said that “the enemy targeted an apartment in the Aisha Bakkar area” in central Beirut, a densely populated neighbourhood close to one of the city’s biggest shopping malls.
AFPTV’s live broadcast showed the sound of an airstrike followed by a fireball erupting in an apartment within a multi-story residential building in Beirut.
An AFP correspondent saw destroyed walls in a building’s seventh and eighth floors with damaged cars nearby and security forces present at the scene.
Last week the Israeli army targeted a hotel in central Beirut, with Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations saying it killed four of its diplomats.
Southern suburbs
Earlier on Wednesday, the NNA reported an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway.
The Israeli military had said in a statement it “has begun strikes against Hezbollah infrastructure” in the area.
It reiterated on Tuesday its call for residents to evacuate the southern suburbs before launching strikes.
Hezbollah said in separate statements on Tuesday that its fighters had attacked Israeli troops near the southern border towns of Khiam and Odaisseh, and launched rockets at Israel including at a “missile defence site” south of Haifa.
It later said it was engaging an Israeli force near the border town of Aitaroun “with light and medium weapons”.
Lebanese authorities said Tuesday that 759,300 people had been registered as displaced, with 122,600 staying in shelters.
The health ministry on Wednesday said that “successive raids launched by the Israeli enemy” on the southern town of Qana, Tyre district, killed five people and wounded five others.
In Hennawiyeh, Tyre district, the ministry said the night prior that an Israeli strike wounded two people, and a follow-up attack killed them, along with a rescuer who came to the scene.
A strike on Zalaya in the southeast killed one, per the ministry.
