Smoke rises over Beirut’s southern suburbs following a series of heavy Israeli strikes [Getty]
Lebanon said an Israeli strike on a Beirut seafront killed at least seven people early on Thursday, making it the third attack on the capital since fighting resumed between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
The Israeli military said separately it had carried out strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight. Hezbollah had announced a major new operation against Israel.
Local media aired footage showing smoke rising along a seaside corniche road after the strike in Beirut, which state-run National News Agency said targeted a car.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Ramlet al-Bayda in Beirut led to an initial toll of seven dead and 21 wounded,” the health ministry said in a statement.
It was the third attack in the heart of the capital since the Middle East war began, as well as repeated Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut where Israel claimed on Thursday it had hit 10 Hezbollah targets.
Hezbollah said early Thursday that it had launched missiles at an Israeli military intelligence base in the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.
Israel, which kept up its strikes in Lebanon even before the war despite a 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah, has since launched air raids across parts of Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas.
Its offensive has killed more than 630 people, according to Lebanese authorities, while more than 800,000 people have registered as displaced from Shia-majority regions, with around 126,000 of them staying in collective shelters.
Some displaced people have been sleeping out in the open or in tents on the streets of Beirut, including in the seaside area of Ramlet al-Bayda.
Late Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for Israel to halt its ground offensive in Lebanon and on Iran-backed group Hezbollah to “immediately” stop attacks, after speaking with the country’s president, Joseph Aoun.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said earlier that they had carried out a joint missile operation with ally Hezbollah against targets in Israel.
The Israeli military said early Thursday that “over the past hours, the IDF has begun a wide-scale wave of strikes targeting terror infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation across Lebanon.”
It also said it hit “dozens of launchers” as well as Hezbollah intelligence and command sites south of Beirut.
It followed a string of Hezbollah statements saying its fighters fired barrages of rockets, advanced missiles and drones at towns, military bases and other locations, mainly in Israel’s north.
On Wednesday, Israel pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut and the country’s south and east, with the health ministry reporting several strikes that each killed at least eight people.
Authorities said a strike on an apartment in the densely populated Aisha Bakkar neighbourhood in west Beirut wounded four people.
On Sunday, Israel hit a seafront hotel not far from Ramlet al-Bayda, saying it was targeting Iranian foreign operations officers. Iran later said the raid killed four of its diplomats.
