The Israeli military pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs with air strikes on Tuesday, mounting one of its heaviest daytime attacks yet on the Hizbullah-controlled area after the defence minister ruled out a ceasefire until Israeli goals were met.
Smoke billowed over Beirut as about a dozen strikes hit the southern suburbs from midmorning. After posting warnings to civilians on social media, the Israeli military said it had struck Hizbullah targets in the Dahiyeh area, including command centres and weapons production sites.
It said it had taken steps to reduce harm to civilians and repeated its standing accusation that Hizbullah deliberately embeds itself into civilian areas to use residents as human shields, a charge Hizbullah rejects.
In northern Israel, two people were killed in the city of Nahariya when a residential building was hit by a missile, Israeli police said.
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Israelis were forced to take shelter across the north as attack drones were launched from Lebanon, the military said. One hit the yard of a kindergarten in a Haifa suburb, where the children had been rushed into a shelter, rescue workers said. None were hurt.
An Israeli strike back across the border killed five people in the Lebanese village of Baalchmay southeast of Beirut, and five more were killed in a strike on the town of Tefahta in the south, Lebanon’s health ministry said. Another person was killed in a strike in Hermel in the northeast, it said.
Beirut residents have largely fled the southern suburbs since Israel began bombing it in September.
Ignited by the Gaza war, the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Hizbullah had been rumbling on for a year before Israel went on the offensive in September, pounding wide areas of Lebanon with air strikes and sending troops into the south.
Israel has dealt Hizbullah heavy blows, killing many of its leaders including Hassan Nasrallah, flattening large areas of the southern suburbs, destroying border villages in the south, and striking more widely across Lebanon.
Since hostilities erupted a year ago, Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,287 people in Lebanon, the majority in the last seven weeks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Its figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Hizbullah attacks have killed about 100 civilians and soldiers in northern Israel, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon over the last year.
Israel’s new defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Monday there would be no ceasefire in Lebanon until Israel achieved its goals.
“Israel will not agree to any arrangement that does not guarantee Israel’s right to enforce and prevent terrorism on its own, and meet the goals of the war in Lebanon – disarming Hizbullah and its withdrawal beyond the Litani river and returning the residents of the north safely to their homes,” he said.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar had said earlier on Monday there had been “a certain progress” in ceasefire talks but the main challenge facing any ceasefire deal would be enforcement.
The Lebanese government, which includes Hizbullah, has repeatedly called for a ceasefire based on the full implementation of a United Nations Resolution that ended a war between the group and Israel in 2006.
Lebanon and Israel have accused each other of violating the resolution.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had delivered hundreds of packets of food to cut-off areas of northern Gaza as fighting raged ahead of a US deadline for Israel to get more aid into the Palestinian enclave or face cuts in military assistance.
Palestinian medics said at least 37 people were killed in Israeli strikes in several parts of the Gaza Strip overnight and into Tuesday, including 10 people killed in a house in Beit Hanoun and two others in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed in northern Gaza, the military said.
Later on Tuesday, an Israeli strike killed 11 Palestinians in Rafah, medics said. A strike on a house in the Gaza City suburb of Sabra killed a Hamas leader in the city, Waleed Aweida, and his granddaughter. Three other people including his wife were still under the rubble.
Israel has faced growing international pressure over the disastrous humanitarian situation facing civilians who have been largely cut off from aid for weeks.
“We are witnessing alarming cases of malnutrition among both children and adults. We are struggling to provide even one meal a day for our hospital workers amid severe food and medical supply shortages,” said Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
Outgoing US president Joe Biden has offered strong backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. But as the toll from Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza has mounted, relations with prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government have been increasingly fraught.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble where more than 2 million Gazans seek shelter as best they can. – Reuters