Lebanon says 11 people have been killed in an Israeli attack on central Beirut

Lebanon said an Israeli airstrike on the heart of the capital, which brought down a residential building and shocked residents in the city, killed at least 11 people on Saturday.

The attack in Beirut was followed by others in the city’s southern suburbs, following calls from the Israeli army to evacuate the area.

Israel has not commented on the attack in central Beirut, while Hezbollah has not yet reported it.

Rescue operations were underway in the area on Saturday morning, with an excavator removing rubble from the eight-storey building, and a fire truck and civil defense rescue workers stationed nearby.

“The strike was so powerful that it felt like the building was standing on our heads,” said Samir, 60, who lives in a building opposite the one that was destroyed.

He said he fled his home with his wife and children in the middle of the night.

“We saw two dead people on the ground… The children started crying and their mother cried even more,” he told AFP.

The Israeli attack, which hit the working-class neighborhood of Basta, killed at least 11 people and injured 63, the Health Ministry said, adding that it also left behind “a large quantity of body parts that are being identified.”

“The final death toll will be determined after DNA tests are conducted,” the ministry said in a statement.

The state-run National News Agency said Israeli fighter jets fired six missiles at the structure, causing “widespread destruction in buildings” nearby.

The pre-dawn attack in Basta was not preceded by an evacuation warning from the Israeli army. Similar attacks carried out without warning outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds tended to target high-level members.

Another attack hit the Hadath neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.

The Israeli army said it had struck Hezbollah targets in the city’s southern suburbs, including “several Hezbollah command centers.”

Israel stepped up its campaign against the Iran-backed group in late September, targeting its strongholds in the east, south and south of Beirut, and later sending ground troops after nearly a year of limited cross-border firefight.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry says at least 3,645 people have been killed since October 2023, when Hezbollah began exchanging fire with Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas. Most deaths have occurred since September this year.

– Hospitals in Gaza are struggling –

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

At least 44,056 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the more than 13 months of the war, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

Civil Protection Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP on Saturday that “19 people were killed and more than 40 injured” by Israeli airstrikes and tank fire in the early morning.

Umm Muhammad Abu Sabla, the sister of one of the victims of Saturday’s strikes, told AFP she rushed to the scene to “find people carrying body parts under the rubble.”

“Our whole life is misery. Let them kill us all so that we can be freed from this suffering,” the 62-year-old said in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The war has created a humanitarian crisis in the besieged area, where people are facing acute shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Marwan al-Hams, director of Gaza field hospitals, told reporters on Friday that all hospitals on Palestinian territory “will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation’s (Israel’s) obstruction of access to fuel.”

The United Nations and others have repeatedly condemned humanitarian conditions, especially in northern Gaza, where Israel said Friday it had killed two commanders involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.

Israel vowed to stop Hamas’ realignment and began a renewed air and ground operation in the north on October 6.

Gaza’s health ministry says the operation has cost thousands of lives.

The UN says more than 100,000 people have been displaced from the area, and an official told the Security Council last week that people are “effectively starving”.

– ‘Absurd’ warrants –

The Hague-based International Criminal Court announced Thursday that it had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct during the war in Gaza.

The court said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the pair bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity, including due to “the lack of food, water, electricity and fuel , and specific medical supplies”.

An angry Netanyahu said: “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions and accusations leveled against Israel.”

The ICC also issued an order against Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, saying it had grounds to suspect him of war crimes and crimes against humanity following the October 7 attack on Israel, including “sexual and gender-related violence” against hostages.

Israel said it killed Deif in July, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.