The Israeli military launched a wave of attacks on the city centre of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday, as dozens more Palestinians were reported killed in strikes in the Gaza Strip.
The state news agency NNA reported an Israeli attack near the famous Mar Elias shopping street. Witnesses told dpa there had been at least two consecutive impacts on the densely populated area.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said two people were killed and 13 injured.
Initial reports indicated that an electronics store had been hit.
A few hours earlier, the Israeli military had hit the Ras Al Naba district in the heart of the capital. Lebanese security sources said the spokesman for the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia Mohammed Afif was killed in that strike.
Afif was one of the few remaining publicly known faces of Hezbollah after the killing of the group’s leadership and had recently led press conferences.
He was considered a confidante of the militia’s former secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike at the end of September.
The Israeli military did not issue evacuation notices ahead of the attacks in Beirut.
Church bells rang in a Christian district Sunday morning to warn of the attacks, prompting residents to seek refuge in nearby churches. Lebanon, unlike Israel, lacks both air raid shelters and an official warning system.
There were several Israeli evacuation calls issued for the southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahieh, which Israeli Air Force has attacked several times in recent days. According to the military, the attacks on Dahieh targeted Hezbollah’s command centres and other facilities.
Almost 100 killed in Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza
Almost 100 people have been killed in new Israeli strikes in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled press office said on Sunday.
An Israeli bomb hit a five-storey residential block in the city of Beit Lahia, killing 72 people, it said. The building housed families displaced from their homes in other parts of the Gaza Strip. Many women and children were reported among the victims.
A further 24 people were killed and several injured in Israeli airstrikes on the al-Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in the centre of the Gaza Strip, the press office said.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that rescue workers were looking for bodies and survivors in the rubble.
The Hamas-controlled health authority in the Gaza Strip reported that 47 Palestinians had died in fighting in the area over the past 24 hours, raising the number killed since the start of the war in October last year to 43,846. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Two Lebanese army officers killed
Back in Lebanon, the military said two Lebanese soldiers were killed in Israeli attack on a post in the south.
The Lebanese army said that Israeli forces had targeted a centre belonging to it in the southern town of Mari. At least two other people were injured. killing one of its personnel and injuring three others, one critically.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
UN peacekeeping patrol fired at 40 times
UN peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon once again come under fire.
A UNIFIL patrol involving French and Finnish peacekeepers was in the village of Maarakeh on Saturday when it was fired at from behind about 40 times.
A statement from the mission said the attack likely came from “non-state actor members” and that the patrol safely made it back to base.
“Although some patrol vehicles had bullet impacts, there was no injury to the peacekeepers,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said on Sunday.
In recent weeks, peacekeeping troops have repeatedly found themselves caught in the crossfire during clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Since September, Israel’s military has massively expanded its attacks in Lebanon, where it says it is seeking to push back Hezbollah from its northern border so that residents can return to their homes.
Fighter planes have bombed targets across the country and frequently in the suburbs south of Beirut. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon so far, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
