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Israel launched multiple air strikes on Beirut on Thursday, killing at least nine people at a Hizbollah-linked medical facility in the heart of capital, and targeting a building used by the militant group’s media office.
The attacks suggested that Israel was expanding its offensive beyond military targets to include the civil infrastructure of Hizbollah. The movement is Lebanon’s dominant political force and has huge network of social programmes and business interests.
The strike on the Hizbollah health authority building hit close to Lebanon’s parliament in a densely populated neighbourhood, and was the deepest attack on the capital since the conflict erupted almost a year ago.
The Israeli military said it had launched a “precise strike” but did not disclose its target.
Israeli bombs later hit a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs that was used by Hizbollah’s media relations office, the group said. After that strike, the Israeli military said had “struck targets belonging to Hizbollah’s intelligence and communications department in Beirut”.
Hizbollah had recently relocated its media team away from the site, an official from the group said, and it was not clear if there were any casualties in that attack.
The area, Dahiyeh, is controlled by Hizbollah and has largely been emptied as it has been the focus of repeated Israeli strikes over the past two weeks.
Lebanese health authorities said that at least seven medical staff, including two paramedics, were among the nine people killed in the attack on the health facility. They added that 14 people were injured.
Israel has stepped up its offensive against Iran-backed Hizbollah over the past two weeks, assassinating the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and launching a ground offensive into southern Lebanon.
The latest strikes come as the region braces for Israel’s retaliation to an Iranian missile barrage that targeted the country on Tuesday, intensifying fears of an all-out war in the Middle East.
Iran said its missile attack on Israel was in response to the assassination of Nasrallah last week in and the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
The US has said Israel has the right to respond, although US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that any retaliation should be “in proportion” and that he was opposed to attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said eight soldiers were killed and several wounded in clashes with Hizbollah militants inside Lebanon.
The Israeli military on Thursday warned residents of 25 more villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately to north of the Awali river, which runs as much as 60km from the border with Israel.
The ground offensive was launched after Israel stepped up its bombing campaign on Lebanon, with many strikes targeting Dahiyeh.
It had previously only targeted one site within the city limits during the conflict, which began after Hizbollah began firing on Israel a day after Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Israeli strikes against what it says are Hizbollah targets across Lebanon have killed more than 1,000 people in the country in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese authorities. They said 46 people had been killed and 85 wounded over the past 24 hours.
When the health facility was struck, a large blast was heard in Beirut, with footage from the scene showing smoke rising over the night-time skyline. Footage from Lebanese news outlets showed the blast had also damaged a cemetery.
“Another sleepless night in Beirut. Counting the blasts shaking the city. No warning sirens. Not knowing what’s next. Only that uncertainty lies ahead. Anxiety and fear are omnipresent,” said Jeanine Hennis, the UN special co-ordinator in Lebanon, on X.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said 17 Israeli bombing raids had taken place in neighbourhoods in southern Beirut.
Beyond its militant activities, Hizbollah has a political party and a sprawling network of social services that runs parallel to state institutions. These include schools, social welfare organisations and healthcare facilities such as the one struck on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Syrian state media said air defences had intercepted “hostile targets . . . in the skies over the western Damascus countryside”.
Separately, Israel’s military said on Thursday that it had killed the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza strip, Rawhi Mushtaha, in a strike three months ago.
Additional reporting by Ahmed Al Omran in Jeddah and Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper in London