Beirut: Israeli airstrikes Saturday killed at least 11 people and injured dozens in central Beirut, as diplomats scrambled to broker a cease-fire.
Lebanon’s civil defence said the death toll was provisional as emergency responders were still digging through the rubble looking for survivors. The strikes were the fourth on the Lebanese capital in less than a week.
The escalation comes after US envoy Amos Hochstein travelled to the region this week in an attempt to broker a cease-fire deal to end the more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has erupted into full-on war in the past two months.
Israeli bombardment has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000, according to the Lebanese health ministry. It has displaced about 1.2 million, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by rockets, drones and missiles in northern Israel and in fighting in Lebanon.
The strikes occurred at 4 am local time, destroying an eight-story building and leaving a crater in the ground. Also on Saturday a drone strike killed one person and injured another in the southern port city of Tyre, according to the state-run National News Agency.
The agency said the people killed and injured in Tyre were fishermen. An Associated Press journalist, who saw the strike from a nearby hotel overlooking the beach, said he had watched the fishermen set up their nets beforehand and they appeared to both be young teenagers.
The strikes came a day after heavy bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and as heavy ground fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants continues in southern Lebanon, with Israeli troops pushing farther from the border.
Israel’s military did not issue a warning for residents to evacuate prior to the strikes in central Beirut and would not comment on those strikes or on the one in Tyre.
The army said in a statement Saturday, that over the past day it had conducted intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, including on several command centres and weapons storage facilities. The army said prior to the strikes it issued advance warnings to civilians in the area.
Strikes also continued in Gaza on Saturday. At least six people were killed, half of them children, and two women, in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Associated Press reporters and staff at Nasser hospital.
After the attack, AP reporters saw people grieving over what appeared to be the lifeless body of a man, and bloodied children were seen helping each other away from the wreckage.
The death toll in the fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas has surpassed 44,000 this week, according to local health officials. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused heavy destruction across wide areas of the coastal territory, leading many to wonder when or how it will ever be rebuilt. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services.
