At least 16 people, including a mayor, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on the municipal headquarters in a city in southern Lebanon, the country’s official National News Agency (NNA) reports.
Lebanese officials denounced Wednesday’s attack, which also wounded more than 50 people in Nabatieh, a provincial capital, saying it was evidence that Israel’s campaign against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was now shifting to target the Lebanese state.
Israeli forces “intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council to discuss the city’s service and relief situation” to aid people displaced by the Israeli campaign, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on a visit to northern Israel near the border with Lebanon that Israel will not halt its assault on Hezbollah to allow negotiations.
“Hezbollah is in great distress,” he said, according to a statement from his office. “We will hold negotiations only under fire. I said this on day one. I said it in Gaza, and I am saying it here.”
Israel launched its ground and air campaign in Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah after a year during which the Iran-aligned group traded fire with Israel across the border in support of the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israel has assassinated much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership and invaded southern border towns, saying its aim is to make it safe for tens of thousands of Israelis to return to homes in northern Israel that they evacuated under Hezbollah fire.
Israel first issued an evacuation notice for Nabatieh, a city of tens of thousands of people, on October 3.
Israel’s military said that on Wednesday, it struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the Nabatieh area and its navy also hit dozens of targets in southern Lebanon.
It said it had “dismantled” a tunnel network used by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces in the heart of a town near the border with Israel, publishing a video showing multiple explosions rocking a cluster of buildings. Lebanese officials said it was the town of Mhaibib.
Israel resumes strikes on Beirut
Earlier, Israel resumed air strikes on Beirut despite objections from the United States over the way it is conducting its campaign in Lebanon.
Israeli military jets targeted the capital early on Wednesday for the first time since Thursday. Three strikes were reported to have hit the southern suburbs of the city.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military stated on social media that Wednesday’s strikes targeted “combat equipment that was stored inside an underground warehouse”.
A warning had been issued earlier that an attack on the Dahiyeh suburb was imminent with residents warned to flee the area near a building marked on a map.
According to Al Jazeera reporters in Beirut, three strikes were heard about 6:50am (03:50 GMT) in the Dahiyeh area. The number of casualties remains unclear.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Hasbaiyya in the south, suggested that the damage resulting from the strikes “doesn’t really suggest that it was an arms dump” that was hit.
Amnesty International has said that warnings from the Israeli military are often issued too late to allow people to escape and do not exonerate Israel from responsibility for civilian casualties.
US ‘opposed’
The resumption of strikes on Beirut came shortly after a spokesperson for the US government expressed concern over the conduct of Israel’s military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, using stronger language than he had previously.
“When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to,” Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said late on Tuesday.
At least 2,367 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since October 8, 2023, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the possibility of a ceasefire, insisting that would allow Hezbollah too close to Israel’s northern border and saying a buffer zone is vital.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said on Tuesday that a ceasefire is the only solution to the conflict but also threatened to expand the scope of the group’s missile strikes across Israel.
Early on Wednesday Israel’s military said about 50 projectiles were fired from Lebanon. No casualties were reported.
In southern Lebanon, at least 15 people were killed in an Israeli attack on the town of Qana. The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hezbollah commander in the strikes late on Tuesday.
Hezbollah said its fighters attacked a gathering of Israeli soldiers in Maskaf Am near the border with artillery shells. It also claimed an attack on the settlement of Karmiel with a barrage of rockets.
