The China Mail - Israel conducts wave of strikes on Beirut

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on March 2 when militant group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel responded with intense strikes on multiple regions around the country and by launching ground operations in the south.

It has also hit central Beirut several times, with and without warning.

AFP journalists in the Lebanese capital said three densely populated neighbourhoods in the heart of Beirut were hit on Wednesday.

In Bashoura, a whole building collapsed into a mound of rubble after being struck.

A map shared by the Israeli military indicated the targeted building had already been hit last week, also after an evacuation warning.

"It was at 4:00 am, we were asleep," said Sara Saleh, a 29-year-old woman displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs, long a Hezbollah bastion but where hundreds of thousands of people live.

"We fled in our pyjamas," she told AFP, after she and her family fled a school they were sheltering in nearby.

Lebanese authorities on Tuesday said Israeli strikes have killed at least 912 people since March 2, while more than a million people have registered as displaced.

- Hezbollah TV -

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) earlier said a strike had hit an apartment in the central Zuqaq al-Blat neighbourhood, a densely populated area close to the government's headquarters and several embassies.

Two other strikes targeted two apartments in the central Basta district, another heavily populated area that Israel struck during a 2024 war with Hezbollah.

An AFP correspondent saw emergency workers at the scene in Basta where the walls of apartments on two adjacent floors appeared to have been blasted off.

Another strike hit Zuqaq al-Blat later in the morning, where an AFP journalist saw people clearing dust and glass from cars and the streets.

Hezbollah's Al Manar TV said Mohammad Sherri, the director of its political programmes, had been killed along with his wife in one of the strikes in Zuqaq al-Blat.

In last week's strike on the area, the Israeli military had told people to evacuate, but no such warning was given before the latest raid.

Lebanon's health ministry reported a preliminary toll for strikes on both areas of 12 dead and 41 wounded, adding that efforts were underway to identify those killed.

- Panic in the south -

Strikes also hit Beirut's southern suburbs, which Israel has pounded since the start of the war, and towns and villages across south Lebanon.

In the coastal city of Sidon, an Israeli strike hit a vehicle near the main seaside road, where many displaced people are staying and sleeping in their cars, according to an AFP correspondent.

The health ministry said two people were killed, including a civil defence rescuer.

Also early Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had "begun striking Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon" including in the Tyre area, where the NNA reported at least four strikes including on a house.

The military later said it planned to strike bridges and crossings over the Litani River, essentially cutting off a large part of the south from the rest of the country.

"To prevent the transfer of reinforcements and weapons, the (Israeli army) intends to attack crossings on the Litani River starting from this afternoon," the military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.

The Israeli military issued another warning, signalling imminent strikes on the Tyre area.

Late Tuesday, it had issued an evacuation order for most of the southern city of Tyre as well as swathes of surrounding areas, saying it planned to "act forcefully" against Hezbollah.

People filled the streets to flee northwards or to Tyre's old quarters, exempt from the warning, an AFP correspondent said.

On Tuesday, the health ministry reported four dead in a strike in the eastern city of Baalbek, and four Syrian nationals killed in the country's south.

An AFP correspondent in Baalbek saw a two-storey building in the heart of the city completely destroyed.

The NNA said a strike on the southern town of Habboush killed at least three people.

Y.Su--ThChM