Israel accused of rare central Beirut strike
A Palestinian militant group said three of its leaders were killed in an Israeli attack on central Beirut early on Monday, in what would be the first time Israel’s military had struck the centre of Lebanon’s capital city since 2006.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant group taking part in the fight against Israel, said three senior figures were killed in the Beirut attack, with initial footage from the scene showing two storeys of an apartment building completely blown out, and onlookers running towards the building.
Two bodies could be seen lying on the street atop a car outside the building, seemingly ejected by the force of the blast. The sound of the explosion was heard around the city.
There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
The Beirut strike, carried out using a drone, according to one source quoted by Agence France-Presse, hit near the Kola intersection, a popular reference point in the city, where taxis and buses gather to pick up passengers.
Key events
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem giving address
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem has begun an address, and said the group lost a brother and a leader when Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah. He has offered condolences to the families of everybody who was killed in the same strike.
Reuters reports, citing the state news agency WAM, that the UAE is to pledge an urgent relief aid package worth $100m (£74.5m / €89.3m) to Lebanon.
While Israel steps up its attacks on targets inside Lebanon to its north, the Israeli military also continues operations in Gaza to its south-west. Hani Mahmoud reporting for Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, tells the news network:
Since this morning, we’ve been seeing funeral after funeral in the halls of the hospital. And there are more bodies still in the morgue as officials are waiting for family members to arrive and take them for burial. Additionally, more shelters have been attacked by Israel, deepening the trauma as it plays out this psychological warfare. The Palestinians’ sense of safety is shattered by these attacks.
Al Jazeera has been banned from operating inside Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has also raided and closed the network’s officie in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
There are multiple unconfirmed reports of explosions being heard in Damascus in Syria.
More details soon …
Our video team have put together this report on Israel’s attack against the Houthi-controlled Yemeni Red Sea port city of Hodeidah.
Israel’s military has stated on its official Telegram channel that in the last hour about 35 projectiles have crossed into northern Israel from Lebanon. It said “several projectiles were intercepted and the rest fell in open areas”. There are no reports of any casualties.
There are media reports that Hezbollah deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, will be giving a speech at noon local time (9am GMT).
More details soon …
Iran will not leave any of “the criminal acts” of Israel unanswered, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a weekly news conference on Monday, Reuters reports.
In other Iranian reaction, the Tasnim news agency quotes head of the Iranian government information council, Elias Hazrati, saying:
We will show the defeat of Israel to the people of the world. The experience of the past several decades shows that the page will return.
Hezbollah’s foundations are so strong that there is no possibility of disruption on its path. Hezbollah has kicked Israel out of Lebanon many times. A terrorist who should have been arrested is now ordering assassinations from the United Nation.
Hezbollah has not used its weapons and now it must start. The Islamic Republic of Iran stands by the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah, and we use all our capacity to help Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us from Lebanon over the news wires.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is convening an extraordinary informal meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday to discuss the EU’s response to the latest escalation in Lebanon, Rueters reports an EU spokesperson said on Monday.
Peter Beaumont
Here is the latest round-up of news from the Middle East crisis from my colleague Peter Beaumont:
Israel’s rapidly expanding war on multiple fronts saw it strike central Beirut for the first time since 2006 early on Monday, after heavy Israeli air strikes involving dozens of aircraft bombed Yemen hours earlier in a long range raid.
The latest strike came as the UN reported some 100,000 people had fled Lebanon for Syria since the latest escalation in the war and as CNN quoted an unnamed figure in the Biden administration saying that the US has changed it military posture in the Middle East amid concerns Iran might attack Israel in response for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s ling time leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.
The Beirut strike targeted three senior figures in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group associated with a series of high profile aircraft hijackings in the 1970s.
The left wing faction, which has not played a significant role in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, said that its military and security commanders in Lebanon, and a third member, were killed in the attack.
Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, and elsewhere continued on Monday as the Palestinian militant group Hamas said its leader in Lebanon was killed Monday in a strike on the country’s south.
Monday’s airstrike comes after Lebanon’s health ministry said 105 people had been killed and another 359 injured by Israeli strikes across the country on Sunday. More than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, it said, without saying how many were civilians. The government said a million people – a fifth of the population – have fled their homes.
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