BEIRUT (AP) — At least 11 people were killed and 48 wounded in Israeli airstrikes that hit two different areas in central Beirut on Thursday evening, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
An Associated Press photographer who went to the scene of the strikes said the first one, in the area of Ras al-Nabaa, appeared to have hit the lower half of an eight-story apartment building, and that explosions were ongoing inside the building. A large number of ambulances arrived at the scene.
The second strike, in the area of Burj Abi Haidar, collapsed an entire building, which was engulfed in flames.
There was no immediate statement from the Israeli military. In recent weeks Israel has launched frequent strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, but strikes in central Beirut are rare. The reports came as the Israeli military continued to pound Hezbollah targets across Lebanon.
Earlier in the day, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip killed at least 27 people, Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted militants, but people sheltering there said the strike hit a meeting of aid workers.
Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Palestinian enclave even as attention has shifted to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. The military launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.
In a separate development, the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers. The attack drew widespread condemnation and prompted the Italian Defense Ministry to summon Israel's ambassador in protest.
The Israeli military acknowledged opening fire at a U.N. base in southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had ordered the peacekeepers to “remain in protected spaces."
Before the Beirut strikes, Lebanon's crisis response unit said Israeli shellfire and airstrikes had killed 28 people and wounded 113, bringing the total to 2,169 killed and 10,212 people wounded in Lebanon since the war erupted last October. At least four people were killed Thursday in the eastern Bekaa Valley, Lebanese health authorities said.
Hezbollah attacks have killed 28 civilians in northern Israel since the war began, as well as 39 Israeli soldiers, including both in northern Israel since last October and in southern Lebanon since Israel’s invasion.
Aid group says staff killed in strike on school
The Israeli strike in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed 27 people, including a child and seven women, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought.
An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces.
The Israeli military said it targeted a militant command and control center inside the school, without providing evidence. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools that were turned into shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of taking cover in them.
Witnesses said the strike occurred while school managers were meeting with representatives of an aid group in a room normally used by Hamas-run police who provide security. They said there were no police in the room at the time.
The Palestinian branch of Terre des Hommes, a Swiss aid group, said in a statement that members of one of its children’s health teams were killed in the strike, without specifying how many.
“There were no militants. There was no Hamas,” said Iftikhar Hamouda, who had fled from northern Gaza earlier in the war.
“We headed to tents. They bombed the tents ... In the streets, they bombed us. In the markets, they bombed us. In the schools, they bombed us,” she said. “Where should we go?”
The Hamas-run government operated a civilian police force numbering in the tens of thousands. They largely vanished from the streets after the start of the war as Israel targeted them with airstrikes, but plainclothes Hamas security personnel still exert control over most areas.
Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces more than a year after the Palestinian militants’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that ignited the war.
The militants stormed into Israel in that attack, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
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Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Magdy reported from Cairo.
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Bilal Hussein, Wafaa Shurafa And Samy Magdy, The Associated Press
