Lebanon’s health ministry said Thursday that at least 11 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut – the third attack on the capital since Israel stepped up its air campaign last month.
Israel has repeatedly attacked the southern Beirut suburbs, a stronghold of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, for more than two weeks, but the attacks have rarely targeted the city center.
“According to preliminary data, 11 people were killed and 48 others were injured in Israeli enemy attacks on the capital Beirut this evening,” the ministry said in a statement.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said the attacks took place in the densely populated areas of Nawerri and Basta.
“The first attack in Beirut targeted the third floor of an eight-storey building in the Naweri area”, and the second attack “targeted a four-storey building in Al-Basta Al-Fouka, which completely collapsed.” NNA.
An AFP photographer at the scene of the attack in the Basta area said two old buildings collapsed, while windows of nearby houses were blown out by the force of the blast.
Civil defense members and local residents were attempting to pull survivors out of the mountain of debris, some of them carried away on stretchers.
Firefighters were working to extinguish a fire in a “residential building” in the Nwayiri area, with residents from upper floors being evacuated using ladders, NNA reports.
Immediately after the raid, live footage from AFP showed two plumes of smoke rising from densely packed buildings.
Earlier this month, Israel carried out a deadly airstrike in Beirut, hitting an emergency services rescue facility run by Hezbollah, killing seven workers, the service said.
Three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a building in Beirut’s busy Qola district on September 30, the leftist armed group said.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and its enemy Israel have been exchanging fire across the border almost daily for almost a year as a result of the Gaza war.
But since September 23, Israel has stepped up its airstrikes on targets in Lebanon, killing more than 1,200 people and forcing more than a million to flee their homes, according to official figures. .
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