At least 22 killed in airstrikes in central Beirut, with Israel also firing on UN peacekeepers

Israeli airstrikes in central Beirut kill 22, escalate conflict with Hezbollah, amid broader regional tensions.

Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut Thursday (October 10, 2024) left two neighborhoods smoldering, killing 22 people and wounding dozens, Lebanon’s health ministry said, as well as further escalating Israel’s bloody conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

The air raid on central Beirut — the deadliest in over a year of war — apparently targeted two residential buildings in separate neighborhoods simultaneously, according to an AP photographer at the scene. It brought down one eight-story building and wiped out the lower floors of the other.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reported strikes. Israeli airstrikes have been far more common in Beirut’s tightly packed southern suburbs, where Hezbollah bases many of its operations.

After the strikes, Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV reported that an attempt to kill Wafiq Safa, a top security official with the group, had failed. It said that Safa had not been inside of either of the targeted buildings.

Thursday's strikes followed a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel that boiled over into all-out war in recent weeks, with Israel carrying out waves of heavy strikes across Lebanon and launching a ground invasion. Hezbollah has expanded its rocket fire to more populated areas deeper inside Israel, causing few casualties but disrupting daily life.

The attack came the same day as Israeli forces fired on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and wounded two of them, drawing widespread condemnation and prompting Italy's Defense Ministry to summon Israel’s ambassador in protest.

Witnesses reported a large number of ambulances and people gathering in the rubble of two Beirut sites that were hit, in the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood and Burj Abi Haidar area.