The China Mail - Israel strikes Beirut hotel as Lebanon says war toll nears 400

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on Monday, when Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during US-Israeli strikes.

Israel, which has kept up strikes targeting Hezbollah despite a 2024 ceasefire, launched multiple waves of strikes this week across Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas.

Hezbollah said on Sunday that it repeatedly targeted northern Israel, including attacking a naval base in Haifa and sending a swarm of drones towards the city of Nahariya.

Israel's military, meanwhile, said that two of its soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon, the first of its troops to have died since the latest offensive began on March 2.

It also reiterated its call for Lebanese residents to leave the area south of the Litani River, which covers many hundreds of square kilometres (miles).

Lebanon's health minister Rakan Nassereddine on Sunday said that Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed 394 people over the past week, including 83 children and 42 women.

Earlier the same day, the health ministry said an Israeli air strike hit Beirut's city centre, targeting "a hotel room" and killing four people and wounding 10 others.

- 'No safe place' -

"I came here from the southern suburbs to be safe with my children and the strike hit," said Abu Hussein, a 45-year-old taxi driver while showing his damaged car.

"There is no safe place."

The strike was the first since Monday to target central Beirut.

An AFP photographer at the bombarded seafront hotel saw one room on the fourth floor with shattered glass and charred walls, while security forces cordoned off the site.

Israel's military said it had "conducted a precise strike targeting key commanders" in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, its foreign operations arm.

A security official at the scene told AFP on condition of anonymity that Hezbollah-linked rescuers recovered three bodies from the hotel.

The area of Raouche is a major tourist destination and remained untouched by Israeli strikes during the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, which ended with a ceasefire in November 2024.

Along its Mediterranean coast, the area is home to dozens of hotels, now overcrowded with displaced people who fled their homes elsewhere in Lebanon.

- Iranians evacuated -

Lebanon's government on Thursday banned any activity by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps -- a main backer of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

A Lebanese official who requested anonymity told AFP that "a total of 117 Iranians, including diplomats and embassy staff, were evacuated on a Russian plane that left Beirut overnight from Saturday to Sunday" for Turkey.

In the south, a strike on Sir al-Gharbiyeh, right above the Litani, killed 11 people including children according to the health ministry, with rescue efforts ongoing to find people under the rubble.

Standing next to a destroyed home, resident Ali Youssef Taha told AFP that "a family was sleeping inside" before "Israeli warplanes bombed the building, resulting in a massacre".

Later on Sunday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported two Israeli strikes on the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in the south.

Israel's army said, meanwhile, that it struck "over 600" Hezbollah targets and killed 200 members of the group in the past week.

Lebanon's health minister insisted that "these are civilians being targeted, not, as they claim, military personnel and military installations", adding that nine rescuers had been killed since the start of the latest war.

On Friday night, a failed Israeli commando operation to find the remains of airman Ron Arad, missing since 1986, killed 41 people in eastern Lebanon.

L.Johnson--ThChM