Twelve people were killed and 41 wounded early Wednesday in Israeli airstrikes that hit densely populated residential neighborhoods in central Beirut, expanding the assault on the Lebanese capital beyond its southern suburbs, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
The strikes mark a sharp escalation in Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, pushing attacks deeper into central Beirut as cross-border fighting with Hezbollah has intensifies again despite a November 2024 ceasefire. The attacks underscore the growing risk that the conflict could slide back into sustained war.
The ministry said the strikes targeted the Bastah and Zokak El-Blat areas, while local media reported damage to residential buildings, including apartments near government headquarters and several embassies.
The strikes took place in the early hours of the morning without prior warning. Other raids later hit the Bashoura neighborhood after an Israeli evacuation warning identified a specific building in the area as a Hezbollah site.
Israeli bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs also continued, while a strike targeted a car in the city of Sidon, killing two people, including a civil defense paramedic who later died of his wounds, according to the Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah rocket launchers, weapons depots, and Hezbollah facilities in the city of Tyre.
In a statement posted on X, it added that it had also struck sites belonging to the Hezbollah-linked finance institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan and facilities linked to the IRGC’s Imam Hussein Division in southern Lebanon, and that naval forces had targeted a key Hezbollah operative in Beirut.
In a related development, the Israeli military acknowledged hitting a UNIFIL site in southern Lebanon on March 6 and wounding Ghanaian peacekeepers, saying it had responded to anti-tank missile fire from Hezbollah.
But an unnamed military source said preliminary UN findings suggest the site was directly hit by Israeli tank shells, in what UNIFIL called an “unacceptable” incident and a violation of international law.
The UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL is deployed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the demarcation line with Israel, an area that remains a flashpoint for clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.
Lebanon has been drawn back into the regional war after Hezbollah launched a new support operation for Iran in its war against the US and Israel that began in late February, firing barrages of rockets that prompted Israeli airstrikes and a ground incursion into several areas of southern Lebanon.
The fighting marks a new escalation in a conflict that resumed in early March. Israel and Hezbollah had reached a ceasefire agreement in November 2024 to end the war that began in October 2023. That agreement saw numerous violations by the Israeli military of Lebanese sovereignty through repeated airstrikes justified as targeting “Hezbollah terrorists.”
