A damaged building stands at the site of an Israeli air strike, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Beirut, Lebanon, October 10, 2024.
Reuters
Beirut: Israeli airstrikes in a densely populated area of central Beirut on Thursday killed at least 22 people and wounded at least 117 others, Lebanese officials said, in what appeared to be the deadliest attack in the Lebanese capital in more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
The strikes hit an area of Beirut where displaced residents had been sheltering after weeks of intense Israeli bombardments near the city. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes. But it has been systematically targeting Hezbollah leaders and the group’s infrastructure.
Hezbollah began launching rockets on northern Israel last year in solidarity with its ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip after Hamas led the Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Both militant groups are backed by Iran.
Israel and Hezbollah have since exchanged a barrage of strikes, displacing tens of thousands of people on either side of the border over the past year. More than 60,000 people in northern Israel have been displaced, and as the conflict has escalated, nearly 1 million people in Lebanon have fled their homes in recent weeks. Israeli and Hezbollah ground forces have also engaged in fierce battles after the Israeli military launched a ground invasion last month.
The strikes Thursday destroyed at least one building, videos verified by The New York Times showed, and they followed a weekslong assault by Israel on areas south of Beirut that are known as Hezbollah strongholds.
Two plumes of thick, acrid smoke rose above the Beirut skyline. Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported that one strike had targeted the middle floor of an eight-story building in the Ras el-Nabaa neighborhood, while the other had leveled a four-story building in the Basta neighborhood.
Beirut’s Fire Department said that it was battling a blaze at a building in Ras el-Nabaa where residents were being evacuated from the top floor with an electronic ladder. Videos from the Basta neighborhood, verified by the Times, showed adjacent buildings had also been damaged in the strike.
Less than two weeks ago, an Israeli bombardment of a residential neighborhood near Beirut assassinated Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, killed or injured civilians and flattened several buildings.
Since then, the Israeli military has kept up its bombardments in Lebanon, and Israeli authorities have suggested that they had also killed Nasrallah’s likely successor and the person expected to replace the successor.