Emergency personnel and residents gather at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a building in the Aisha Bakkar neighbourhood of Beirut. Photo: AFP
BEIRUT:
Israel pressed its attacks across Lebanon on Wednesday, hitting an apartment building in central Beirut, in the second targeting of the heart of the capital since the Middle East war began.
In New York, around 30 countries backing the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon voiced concern over the fighting in Lebanon, which was drawn into the war last week when militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.
Israel, which kept up its strikes in Lebanon even before the war despite a 2024 ceasefire, has since launched air raids across Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas — an offensive that has left 570 people dead according to the health ministry.
Israel’s UN envoy Danny Danon said Wednesday that Israeli forces would continue to operate in Lebanon “as long (as) there will be a threat against us”.
Hezbollah meanwhile affirmed its “commitment” to the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamanei.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said “the enemy targeted an apartment in the Aisha Bakkar area” in central Beirut, a densely populated neighbourhood close to one of the city’s biggest shopping malls.
AFPTV’s live broadcast captured the sound of an air strike followed by a fireball erupting in an apartment within a multi-storey residential building in Beirut.
An AFP correspondent saw destroyed walls in the building’s seventh and eighth floors, with damaged cars nearby and security forces present at the scene.
When the strike hit, “I ran from room to room, pulled my wife and daughter out of the rooms and hid them behind a wall, then the second strike hit”, said Fawzi Asmar, owner of a bakery on the street where the strike took place.
Samer Knio, a civil defence paramedic, said glass and debris fell on his team as they were evacuating the dead and wounded from the scene, “but God protected us”.
Lebanese authorities said Wednesday that more than 780,000 people had been registered as displaced, with more than 120,000 staying in official shelters.
Some residents fear being caught in Israeli air raids targeting people sheltering nearby.
“We don’t know who they’re targeting. Maybe someone related to something, maybe not,” Amal Hisham, 46, said. “Who do I blame? Who do I not blame?”
The health ministry has announced an initial toll of four people wounded in the strike — the second in central Beirut after the Israeli army last week targeted a hotel, with Iran later saying that raid killed four of its diplomats.
