Lebanon’s health ministry says at least 22 people have been killed and 117 have been wounded in Israeli airstrikes that hit two different areas in central Beirut, leaving two neighborhoods smoldering and further escalating Israel’s bloody conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
The strikes apparently targeted two residential buildings in separate neighborhoods of western Beirut, according to an AP photographer at the scene, bringing down one multi-story building and wiping out the lower floors of another.
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The Israeli military said it was looking into the reported strikes on the Lebanese capital. Israeli airstrikes have been far more common in Beirut’s tightly packed southern suburbs, where Hezbollah bases many of its operations.
Thursday's strikes followed a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel that 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.
The attack came the same day as Israeli forces fired on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and wounded two of them. The attack drew widespread condemnation and prompted the Italian Defense Ministry to summon Israel’s ambassador in protest.
Before the latest Beirut strikes, Lebanon's crisis response unit said Israeli attacks over the past day had killed 28 people, bringing the total to 2,169 killed in Lebanon since the war erupted last October.
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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 ground invasion that has displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon.
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 Palestinian militant targets across the Gaza Strip.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 27 people, 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.
