The Israeli army launched a wave of attacks on the city center of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday, as dozens more Palestinians were reportedly killed in attacks in the Gaza Strip.
The state news agency NNA reported an Israeli attack near the famous Mar Elias shopping street. Witnesses told dpa that at least two consecutive impacts had occurred in the densely populated area.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said two people were killed and 13 injured.
Initial reports indicated that an electronics store had been hit.
A few hours earlier, the Israeli army had struck the Ras Al Naba district in the heart of the capital. Lebanese security sources said the spokesman for the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia Mohammed Afif was killed in that attack.
Afif was one of the few remaining publicly known faces of Hezbollah following the assassination of the group’s leadership and had recently led press conferences.
He was considered a confidante of the militia’s former secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September.
The Israeli army did not issue any evacuation orders prior to the attacks in Beirut.
Church bells rang in a Christian neighborhood on Sunday morning to warn of the attacks, prompting residents to take refuge in nearby churches. Unlike Israel, Lebanon lacks both bomb shelters and an official warning system.
Several Israeli evacuation calls have been issued for Beirut’s southern suburbs known as Dahieh, which the Israeli Air Force has attacked several times in recent days. According to the military, the attacks on Dahieh targeted Hezbollah command centers and other facilities.
Nearly a hundred killed in Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza
Nearly 100 people have been killed in new Israeli attacks in northern Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled news agency said on Sunday.
An Israeli bomb hit a five-storey residential block in the city of Beit Lahia, killing 72 people, the report said. The building housed families displaced from their homes in other parts of the Gaza Strip. The victims included many women and children.
Another 24 people were killed and several injured in Israeli airstrikes on the al-Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in the center of the Gaza Strip, the news agency said.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that rescuers were searching the rubble for bodies and survivors.
The Hamas-controlled health authority in the Gaza Strip reported that 47 Palestinians had been killed in fighting in the area in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of deaths since the war began in October last year to 43,846. The figures make no distinction between combatants and civilians.
Two Lebanese army officers killed
Back in Lebanon, the army said two Lebanese soldiers were killed in an Israeli attack on a post in the south.
The Lebanese army said Israeli forces had attacked a center in the southern city of Mari. At least two other people were injured. killing one of his staff and injuring three others, one seriously.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
UN peace patrol fired forty times
UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon are again under fire.
A UNIFIL patrol with French and Finnish peacekeepers was in the village of Maarakeh on Saturday when it was shot at about 40 times from behind.
A statement from the mission said the attack likely came from “members who are not state actors” and that the patrol returned safely to the base.
“Although some patrol vehicles were hit by bullets, peacekeepers were not injured,” the UN interim force in Lebanon said on Sunday.
In recent weeks, peacekeepers have repeatedly been caught in the crossfire during clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Since September, the Israeli army has vastly expanded its attacks in Lebanon, where it says it wants to push Hezbollah back from its northern border so residents can return to their homes.
Warplanes have bombed targets across the country and regularly in the suburbs south of Beirut. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon so far, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
