BEIRUT (AP) — Israel’s air force carried out an airstrike on a southern suburb of Lebanon's capital on Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military said, further straining a fragile ceasefire a day before crucial negotiations in Washington.
The strike hit an apartment building, but the target of the attack wasn't immediately clear. White smoke billowed from a residential neighborhood in the suburb of Choueifat, close to Beirut's international airport.
Tensions have been increasing in southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops recently crossed the strategic Litani River, which the Israeli military has used as a de facto boundary. Large areas to the south are under Israeli military control, despite the Washington-brokered ceasefire from April 17.
This was the first attack close to Beirut since May 6, when an Israeli strike killed a military official with Hezbollah militant group’s elite Radwan Forces in another southern suburb.
Overnight, Israeli forces pounded Tyre, Lebanon's fourth-largest city, and killed at least 14 people across the south of the country in their ongoing military escalation against Hezbollah before the Lebanon-Israel talks in Washington.
Five women and children and a Lebanese soldier were among those killed in the strikes. Dozens of others were wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry and the state-run National News Agency, or NNA.
The Israeli military said, meanwhile, that one of its soldiers was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the widespread attacks on Tyre and Nabatiyeh, describing them as “onslaughts” and calling the ongoing displacement “collective punishment.”
“This only strengthens our resolve for the necessity of an immediate ceasefire, working toward a complete Israeli withdrawal from our land,” Salam said in a social media post.
Lebanese minister seeks end to Tyre attacks
Source: WPLG
