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Israel has struck central Beirut for the first time in a year of fighting, as it expands the offensive against its adversaries across the region.
Monday’s early hours strike in the Kola bridge area of Beirut came as two people familiar with the situation said the Israeli military had conducted limited ground incursions into Lebanon.
The strike was the first within the city limits of the Lebanese capital since Israel’s 2006 war with Hizbollah. It hit an apartment building, killing three leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to the organisation, which is designated as a terrorist group by the US, EU and UK.
The two people familiar with the situation said Israeli forces had also carried out small-scale operations within Lebanon. One said the incursions had been limited in scale and targeted artillery positions of the Iranian-backed Hizbollah militant group and other infrastructure near the border.
It is not the first time Israeli forces have carried out operations on the Lebanese side of the border since the start of the war. In April, four Israeli soldiers were injured while carrying out an operation inside Lebanese territory.
A military spokesman said the Israel Defense Forces did not comment on special operations.
Israeli military leaders have raised the prospect in recent weeks of a ground offensive into Lebanon and mobilised at least two brigades on the northern border. The spokesman said on Monday no ground operation had started.
Overall, Israel’s assault has killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon during the past week, including more than 100 on Sunday alone, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas added on Monday that one of its leaders in Lebanon had been killed in an Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it continued to launch attacks overnight on Hizbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon.
Days of Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut have killed dozens of top Hizbollah commanders, including its influential leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Videos from central Beirut showed rubble strewn across a busy street as ambulances raced to the scene after Monday’s strike, which the footage indicated had targeted a specific apartment. The Israeli military has not commented on the strike.
Amid scenes of panic and mass flight, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said up to 1mn people have been displaced, cautioning that the total was likely to be far more than those recorded in official shelters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will continue its offensive against Hizbollah and its allies until more than 60,000 people displaced from Israel’s north by a year of cross-border fire are able to return home, despite calls by the US and other western powers for Israel to de-escalate.
Israel has also widened its offensive against Iranian-backed groups. Israeli fighter jets hit multiple sites in Yemen linked to the Houthi rebels on Sunday.
Netanyahu said the country was in the process of “changing the balance of power” in the Middle East and vowed to keep up its offensive on multiple fronts.
In Yemen, Israeli warplanes targeted power plants, ports and other infrastructure in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, a Houthi rebel stronghold, after the country’s military intercepted a missile launched from Yemen over central Israel on Saturday.
The Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israel, merchant ships and US naval vessels in the Red Sea since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza.
Explosions were also heard in the Syrian capital Damascus, as a strike appeared to target the city’s outskirts, local news outlets reported.
US President Joe Biden on Sunday said he planned to speak to Netanyahu. When asked if an all-out war in the Middle East could be avoided, he replied: “It has to be.”
EU foreign ministers will hold an emergency crisis meeting via video conference on Monday afternoon, officials said, to devise a joint response to the spiralling crisis.
Mikati said the state was doing its utmost given its available resources to deal with what he called the “largest displacement in the region, in Lebanon and even in history”.
Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Brussels and Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper in Beirut
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