Hezbollah pauses attacks
Israeli strikes kill over 80 people – including medics – across country, says Lebanon’s health ministry spox
News agency
beirut
Israel carried out its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since the conflict with Hezbollah broke out last month, even as the Iran-aligned group paused attacks on northern Israel and Israeli troops in Lebanon under a two-week US-Iran ceasefire.
Consecutive explosions shook Beirut, sending smoke billowing across the capital, as Israel’s military said it had launched the largest coordinated strike of the war. More than 100 Hezbollah command centres and military sites were targeted in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, it said.
The strikes killed 89 people – including a dozen medics – and wounded 700 across the country, Lebanon’s health ministry spokesman told Reuters.
In Beirut, Reuters reporters saw people on motorcycles picking up wounded and transporting them to hospitals because there were not enough ambulances to get them in time. A group of firefighters worked to put out flames in a car park after one strike left more than a dozen cars scorched and mangled.
The head of Lebanon’s syndicate of doctors, Elias Chlela, called in a written statement for “all physicians from all specialities” to head to any hospital they could to offer help. One of Beirut’s biggest hospitals said it was in need of donations of all blood types.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said overnight that the ceasefire suspending the six-week-old US-Israeli war against Iran did not apply to Lebanon, and the Israeli military said operations against Hezbollah there would continue.
That position contradicted comments by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key intermediary in the US-Iran ceasefire talks, who had said the truce would include Lebanon.
Lebanon’s state news agency NNA had reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon earlier in the day, including artillery shelling and a dawn airstrike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. An Israeli strike on the southern city of Sidon killed eight people and wounded 22 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
A further strike hit central Beirut in the early evening, NNA reported.
‘A grave violation’
Hezbollah stopped attacking Israeli targets early on Wednesday, three Lebanese sources close to the group told Reuters. The group’s last public statement on its military activity was posted at 1am (2200 GMT Tuesday), saying it had targeted Israeli troops inside Lebanon on Tuesday evening.
“Hezbollah was informed that it is part of the ceasefire – so we abided by it, but Israel as usual has violated it and committed massacres all across Lebanon,” senior Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters.
Another Hezbollah lawmaker, Hassan Fadlallah, told Reuters the Israeli strikes were “a grave violation of the ceasefire” and that there would be “repercussions for the entire agreement” if they continued.
The group is likely to issue a statement outlining its formal position on the ceasefire and on Netanyahu’s assertion that Lebanon is not included, the three Lebanese sources said.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, welcoming the US-Iran ceasefire, said Beirut would continue its efforts to ensure that Lebanon was included in any lasting regional peace agreement.
Most of Wednesday’s strikes were in civilian-populated areas, Israel’s military said. Hours before the strike, the military had issued warnings for some areas of southern Beirut and southern Lebanon. No such warning was given for central Beirut, which was also hit.
