Strike on central Beirut as Lebanon death toll passes 100 – as it happened | Lebanon

We’re ending our live coverage here, but if you want to read the latest on the strike on central Beirut, William Christou has this wrap of the day.

• More than 100 people were killed across Lebanon by Israeli strikes on Sunday, according to the country’s health ministry. It said more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, without saying how many were civilians. The government said a million people – a fifth of the population – have fled their homes.

• A strike was carried out near the Kola intersection in central Beirut in the early hours of Monday morning, the first time Beirut has been hit outside the southern suburbs since 2006. The strike hit the upper floor of an apartment building. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said in a statement that three of its leaders were killed in the attack and blamed Israel.

• Israel said it bombed Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday. The airstrikes on Yemen’s port of Hodeidah were a response to Houthi missile attacks on Israel in recent days, Israel said. The Houthi-run health ministry said at least four people were killed and 29 wounded. Images from Hodeidah showed parts of the city covered in a massive pall of dust, and towering explosions in the distance.

• Hezbollah confirmed that Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of the militant group’s central council, was killed on Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. The group also confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in the airstrike on Friday strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah denied claims that Abu Ali Rida, the commander of the group’s Bader Unit in south Lebanon had been killed. Rida is the last remaining senior military commander of Hezbollah that remains alive.

• White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon had “wiped out” Hezbollah’s command structure, but he warned the group will work quickly to rebuild it. President Joe Biden said Sunday he would speak soon with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and believes that an all-out war in the Middle East must be avoided.

• Israel on Sunday vowed to keep up its assault. “We need to keep hitting Hezbollah hard,” Israel’s military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said. Israel’s military said it struck dozens of targets in Lebanon including launchers and weapons stores and had intercepted eight projectiles coming from the direction of Lebanon and one from the Red Sea. It also said dozens of Israeli aircraft had attacked power plants and Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports in Yemen, accusing the Houthis of operating under Iran’s direction and in cooperation with Iraqi militias.

• The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has broken his silence on Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. On Sunday, Syria’s state-run outlet Sana quoted Assad as saying: “We are certain that the Lebanese national resistance will continue on the path of struggle and justice in the face of the occupation, and will continue to support the Palestinian people in their struggle for their just cause.”

• Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel should not be allowed to attack countries in the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance” one after the other. Pezeshkian, in comments carried by state media, said Lebanon should be supported. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards deputy commander, Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in the attack that killed Nasrallah in Beirut. Pezeshkian said “we cannot accept such actions and they will not be left unanswered. A decisive reaction is necessary.”

• Saudi Arabia has stressed the “need to preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. In a statement released on Sunday amid Israel’s deadly airstrikes, the Saudi foreign ministry said it was “following with great concern the developments taking place in Lebanon”.

• Israeli opposition lawmaker Gideon Saar rejoined Netanyahu’s government on Sunday, a step that is likely to strengthen the Israeli prime minister politically. Saar, who has been one of Netanyahu’s most vocal critics in the past few years, is due to serve as a minister without a portfolio and have a seat in the prime minister’s security cabinet, Israeli media reported. Expanding the government to include Saar’s strengthens Netanyahu by making him less reliant on other members of his ruling coalition, which has been struggling in the polls.

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In just over a week, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed seven high-ranking commanders and officials from Hezbollah.

“It has lost its head, and we need to keep hitting Hezbollah hard,” Israel’s military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on Sunday.

Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force now finds itself trying to recuperate from severe blows, having lost key members who have been part of Hezbollah since its establishment in the early 1980s.

Chief among them was Hassan Nasrallah. Since 1992, Nasrallah had led the group through several wars with Israel, and oversaw the party’s transformation into a powerful player in Lebanon. After Syria’s uprising 2011 spiraled into civil war, Hezbollah played a pivotal role in keeping Syrian president Bashar Assad in power. Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah also helped develop the capabilities of fellow Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq and Yemen.

Nabil Kaouk, who was killed in an airstrike Saturday, was the deputy head of Hezbollah’s Central Council. He had been seen as a potential successor to Nasrallah.

Ibrahim Akil was a top commander and led Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces, which Israel has been trying to push further away from its border with Lebanon. He was also a member of its highest military body, the Jihad Council, and for years had been on the United States’ wanted list. The U.S. state department says Akil was part of the group that carried out the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut and orchestrated the taking of German and American hostages.

Ahmad Wehbe was a commander of the Radwan Forces and played a crucial role in developing the group since its formation almost two decades ago. He was killed alongside Akil in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs that struck and leveled a building.

Ali Karaki led Hezbollah’s southern front, playing a key role in the ongoing conflict. He was killed alongside Nasrallah.

Mohammad Surour was the head of Hezbollah’s drone unit, which was used for the first time in this current conflict with Israel.

Ibrahim Kobeissi led Hezbollah’s missile unit. The Israeli military says Kobeissi planned the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli soldiers at the northern border in 2000, whose bodies were returned in a prisoner swap with Hezbollah four years later.

Even in the months before this recent escalation, Israel’s military had targeted top commanders, most notably Fuad Shukur in late July, hours before an explosion in Iran widely blamed on Israel killed the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. The US accuses Shukur of orchestrating the 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen.

Leaders of key units in the south, Jawad Tawil, Taleb Abdullah, and Mohammad Nasser, who over several decades became instrumental members of Hezbollah’s military activity were all killed as well.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine says leaders killed in Beirut

More images from the site of the Israeli strike on Beirut’s Kola district have started coming in. It’s being reported that four people were killed in the attack on an apartment building.

The IDF has said its attack on Lebanon’s Bekaa valley tonight was targeting “dozens of launchers” and buildings where Hezbollah weapons were stored.

Fighter jets of the Air Force attacked dozens of terrorist targets of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the Bekaa region of Lebanon in the last two hours.”

Israel’s military has also said it launched attacks on areas in southern Lebanon.

Four dead in Israeli strike on central Beirut – reports

Summary

Israeli opposition lawmaker Gideon Saar is rejoining prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, a step that is likely to strengthen Netanyahu politically.

Saar, who has been one of Netanyahu’s most vocal critics in the past few years, is due to serve as a minister without a portfolio and have a seat in the prime minister’s security cabinet, Israeli media reported.

Expanding the government to include Saar’s strengthens Netanyahu by making him less reliant on other members of his ruling coalition, which has been struggling in the polls.

“Difficult and trying days lie ahead,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “This move contributes to our own unity and to our unity in the face of our enemies.”

Saar and Netanyahu said they were putting their past rifts aside.

“We will work together, shoulder to shoulder, and I intend to seek his [Saar’s] assistance in the forums that influence the conduct of the war,” Netanyahu said.

Opposed to Palestinian statehood on security grounds, Saar is seen as further to the right than Netanyahu ideologically, but his joining the government is not widely expected to have a big impact on its security policy.

By joining the government with his four-seat party, Saar will give Netanyahu a solid majority of 68 in the 120-seat parliament. This could help solve one of the biggest political challenges the coalition faces in the next few months – passing a new military conscription law, after Israel’s supreme court ruled in June that the state must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students into the military.

The issue has widened cracks in Netanyahu’s coalition, which relies on two ultra-Orthodox parties that want to keep their constituents in religious seminaries and out of the army.

Saar’s inclusion also reduces the power of the far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has threatened to bring the government down if it ends the war in Gaza.

Saar, 57, was once a senior member in Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party but left after a failed leadership challenge.

We’re getting more information on the Israeli strike on central Beirut. Reuters news agency is reporting that an apartment building was hit in what would be the first attack within the Lebanese capital’s city limits.

The strike hit the upper floor of the apartment building in the Kola district, Reuters witnesses said. A security source told Reuters that at least two people were killed. The area where the strike took place is a primary Sunni district with a busy thoroughfare lined with shops and residential buildings.

There has been no immediate comment from Israel’s military.

A reminder, authorities in Lebanon say at least 105 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Sunday. The government says a million people – a fifth of the population – have fled their homes.

The IDF says it has launched new strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley.

In the past, Israel has claimed the group stores thousands of rockets in the region.

The strike on central Beirut came as French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot arrived in Lebanon on Sunday night, making him the first high-level foreign diplomat to visit since Israeli airstrikes intensified one week ago.

The arrival of Barrot, who earlier called for an immediate halt to the strikes, came as the foreign ministry announced that a second French national had been killed in Lebanon, though details were unclear.

After a meeting about the status of French nationals, Barrot on Monday will meet officials including prime minister Najib Mikati. He is also due to meet the UN Special coordinator for Lebanon and members of the UN peacekeeping force in the south.

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Israel launches first strike on central Beirut

William Christou

Israel carries out strike within Beirut’s city limits – reports

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross has called on countries to urgently recommit to respecting international law, pointing to “the number of wounded and dead during the conflicts in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine”.

Mirjana Spoljaric said international humanitarian law (IHL) was being “systematically trampled underfoot by those who lead military operations”, in an interview with Swiss daily Le Temps.

The ICRC is the caretaker of the Geneva conventions which strives to act as a neutral intermediary in conflicts.

But it was finding its access to populations in need “increasingly constrained”, said Spoljaric.

On Friday the ICRC launched an initiative with six countries – Brazil, China, France, Jordan, Kazakhstan and South Africa – in a bid to galvanising political support for humanitarian law.

The Geneva conventions, adopted in 1949 in the wake of the second world war, “embody humanity’s shared conscience, values that transcend borders and creeds”, they said in a joint statement.

“Yet, the suffering we witness today in armed conflicts around the world is proof that respect for and compliance with their most fundamental rules are not being upheld.”

The initiative will strive to develop concrete recommendations for ways to prevent humanitarian violations and promote increased protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, said the IHRC.