BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli airstrikes Saturday killed at least 11 people and injured dozens in central Beirut, officials said, as diplomats scrambled to broker a cease-fire.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency responders dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, it said, adding that 63 people were wounded. The strikes were the fourth in the Lebanese capital in less than a week.
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The escalation comes after U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the region this week in an attempt to broker a cease-fire deal to end the more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has erupted into full-on war in the past two months.
Israeli bombardment has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by rockets, drones and missiles in northern Israel and in fighting in Lebanon.
Israel’s war with Hamas also shows no signs of abating. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 80 people were killed between Thursday and Friday in multiple strikes in the enclave’s north, including the Kamal Adwan and Al-Ahli hospitals. Dozens of people are still trapped under the rubble, it said.
Dawn airstrikes reduce a building to rubble
The strikes at 4 a.m. destroyed an eight-story building in central Beirut and left a crater in the ground. Also on Saturday, a drone strike killed two people and injured three in the southern port city of Tyre, according to the state-run National News Agency.
Hezbollah legislator Amin Shiri said Saturday that the building targeted was a residential one and no Hezbollah officials were inside.
Mohammed Bikai, spokesperson for the Fatah Palestinian faction in the Tyre area, said those killed were Palestinian refugees who were fisherman living in the nearby al-Rashidieh camp. He said the father of one of the men was also wounded.
Despite a warning last month by Israel’s army telling people not to fish along Lebanon’s southern coast, Bikai said the Palestinians continued to go out to sea. “You can’t tell someone who needs to eat that you can’t fish,” he said.
Israel’s military did not issue a warning for residents prior to the strikes in central Beirut and did not comment on the casualties. It warned residents Saturday in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs that they were residing near Hezbollah facilities, which the army would target in the near future. The warning, posted on X, told people to evacuate at least 500 meters (yards) away.
The army said that over the past day it had conducted intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. It said it hit several command centers and weapons storage facilities.
At least 6 including children killed in southern Gaza
Strikes also continued in Gaza on Saturday. At least six people, half of them children and including two women, were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to AP reporters and staff at Nasser Hospital.
The death toll from the 13-month-long war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas surpassed 44,000 this week, according to local health officials. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused heavy destruction across wide areas of the coastal territory, leading many to wonder when or how it will ever be rebuilt. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services.
In Deir al-Balah, local bakeries shut down for five days this week and the price of a bag of bread climbed above $13, as bread and flour vanished from shelves before more supplies arrived.
At least two women were fatally shot on Saturday while waiting in a line for bread in the city, relatives and witnesses told the AP.
Heba Ajam, who was waiting at the bakery and saw the shooting, said one was shot in the head and another in the neck. It was unclear who shot them and why. The lack of food and security have forced some bakeries to close in central and southern Gaza.
Reactions continue to ICC warrants
The strikes in Gaza come days after a decision by the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, based on “reasonable grounds” that they bear responsibility for a war crime and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The court also issued a warrant for top Hamas official Mohammed Deif, who Israel claims it killed.
Netanyahu condemned the warrant, saying Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.”
Global reactions have been mixed.
The U.K. reiterated its support for the court but stopped short of saying whether it would arrest Netanyahu if he visited. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office has indicated that Britain would comply with its legal obligations under domestic and international law, but refused to get into hypothetical issues about individuals.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Friday refused to comment, saying that the court’s rulings are “insignificant” for Russia, which doesn’t recognizes its jurisdiction.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States fundamentally rejects the court’s decision. She said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision.”
The U.S. is one of dozens of countries that did not sign and do not accept the court’s jurisdiction. Others include Israel, Russia and China.
Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an associate fellow in the International Security Program at London’s Chatham House think tank, said that even if Netanyahu won’t be able to travel to many European countries, he’ll go to the United States. That will push him closer to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I don’t think Netanyahu will be arrested because he’s not going to take the risk of traveling to any country that will be able to issue an arrest warrant. So in that sense, it limits his freedom of movement, but that will only strengthen his ties to Donald Trump,” she said.
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Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil in Tyre, Lebanon, Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem, Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Mohammad Jahjouh in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.