Israel carried out a deadly air raid Thursday on a Hezbollah rescue facility in central Beirut, Lebanese sources said, after multiple Israeli ground troops were killed near the border.
The second strike targeting the capital’s center this week follows Iran launching its largest missile attack yet on its arch-foe Israel, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn Tehran would pay for its “big mistake”.
Iran, which backs Hezbollah, said it would step up its response if Israel retaliates, defying calls for de-escalation in a war that has cost more than 1,000 lives in Lebanon.
The latest Israeli strike hit an alleged Hezbollah rescue facility, a source close to the group told AFP, killing at least six people, according to a Lebanese health ministry toll.
AFP journalists in Beirut heard a loud explosion and reported some buildings shaking.
Israel, shifting its focus from the Gaza war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, says it is trying to secure its border with Lebanon so tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by nearly a year of exchanges of fire with Hezbollah can return home.
Israel has bombarded Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold, having dealt a significant blow to the group last week by killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive strike.
A day after its military said it was conducting “targeted ground raids” in south Lebanon, Israel reported the first death of a soldier in the Israel-Hezbollah war, a toll that later rose to eight dead.
Hezbollah said it forced Israeli soldiers to retreat, targeted an Israeli unit with explosives, and destroyed three Merkava tanks with rockets as they advanced on Maroun al-Ras village.
The Israeli military said it staged two brief incursions into Lebanon, ordering residents to flee more than 20 areas.
The military released footage that it said showed soldiers inside Lebanon, moving through villages and mountainous areas on foot, and announced it had deployed a second division to support the fighting.
Israel launched three air raids on Beirut’s southern suburbs just before midnight Wednesday, a source close to Hezbollah said, the third wave of strikes in the past 24 hours. The explosions were audible kilometres away.
Residents in multiple parts of densely-populated southern Beirut were told by the Israeli military to leave the area in the early hours of Thursday, in an order published on social media.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 46 people were killed and 85 others injured by Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours.
Earlier, Lebanon’s disaster management agency said 1,928 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah began trading cross-border fire after the Gaza war erupted nearly a year ago.
