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Lebanese officials have reported that an Israeli air attack on a building in downtown Beirut has resulted in at least five fatalities and eight injuries.
An Israel military statement said that the multi-story block in Bachoura, which was home to a health center associated with Hezbollah, was struck in a “precision” operation.
This is the first Israeli attack near the heart of Beirut, a mere few meters from the parliament building in Lebanon. There were five further air attacks overnight against targets in the southern neighborhood of Dahieh.
It follows the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announcement that eight troops had died in combat in southern Lebanon, marking the force’s first casualties since ground operations against Hezbollah, an armed organization supported by Iran, began.
Hezbollah maintained it had enough fighters and munitions to drive back the Israelis, claiming it had damaged Israeli tanks throughout the conflict.
The IDF had earlier declared that additional armored and infantry personnel had joined the operation, which aimed to destroy “terrorist infrastructure” in border communities in Lebanon.
Three explosions were reported in Dahieh, on the southern outskirts of the city, during the most recent nocturnal strikes; a fourth explosion was heard closer to the city center.
Two further airstrikes were carried out in Dahieh following an IDF warning to the local population that it was targeting what it claimed to be Hezbollah infrastructure in the city’s acknowledged stronghold.
Prior to the airstrikes that occurred during the night, the health ministry of Lebanon reported that, without making a distinction between fighters and civilians, 46 persons had been killed and 85 injured in Israeli attacks during the previous 24 hours.
It also surfaced that one of the victims of recent Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon was a permanent resident of the United States, residing in the state of Michigan.
The Detroit News stated that Kamel Ahmad Jawad, 56, was in the nation to take care of his aging mother.
A White House representative acknowledged his death and stated, “His death is a tragedy, as are the deaths of many civilians in Lebanon.”
According to Lebanese officials, Hezbollah has been weakened following two weeks of Israeli strikes and other attacks that have resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 people and the displacement of almost 1.2 million people throughout Lebanon.
After over a year of cross-border hostilities brought on by the Gaza War, Israel has gone on the attack, claiming it wants to guarantee the safe return of border region residents who Hezbollah strikes have displaced.
Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist political, military and social group that exerts substantial power in Lebanon. Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations have labeled it as a terrorist organization.
On the second full day of their ground incursion into Lebanon, Israeli forces met Hezbollah militants for the first time.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated in a statement on Wednesday that soldiers supported by aircraft had “eliminated terrorists and dismantled terrorist infrastructure through precision-guided munitions and close-range engagements” in numerous southern Lebanese locations.
Later, the IDF stated that eight soldiers were killed in combat. The majority were commandos from the elite Egoz and Golani Reconnaissance Units.
Hezbollah claimed that its militants launched anti-tank missiles at Israeli troops, killing and injuring scores during fighting in one border town early Wednesday.
It further claimed that additional forces were attacked with explosives and gunfire on the outskirts of Kafr Kila and that missiles near Maroun al-Ras damaged three Israeli Merkava tanks.
Hezbollah has spent years developing infrastructure in southern Lebanon, including massive underground tunnels. It also has thousands of warriors with extensive knowledge of the area.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid homage to the eight troops, saying they died “amid a tough war against Iran’s axis of evil, which seeks to destroy us”.
“This will not happen, because we will stand together, and with God’s help, we will win together,” he announced.
Israeli air defenses were also in action again, a day after repelling the vast majority of Iran’s more than 180 ballistic missiles fired at Israel on Tuesday night in retaliation for the Israeli air strike in Beirut last Friday that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a top Iranian commander.
More than 240 rockets were terminated from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel all through Wednesday, as per the IDF.
Netanyahu demands that the ground hostility in Lebanon will corrupt Hezbollah’s capacity and push its contenders back, at last permitting around 60,000 Israelis to get back to their homes close to the boundary.
In the meantime US President Joe Biden said he didn’t uphold an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iranian atomic locales. He added that the US “will talk about with the Israelis what they will do” because of the Iranian blast.
