Hits bridges over Litany River linking southern Lebanon to rest of country
Israel stepped up air strikes on Beirut yesterday, killing at least 10 people and destroying a 10-storey building near the city centre in the third week of its war with Iran-backed Hizbollah, Lebanese authorities said.
In a further escalation, Israeli warplanes began striking bridges over the Litani River that link southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, destroying at least two of them, Lebanese state media said. The Israeli military said it would target bridges on the Litani to prevent Hizbollah transferring fighters and weapons, and reiterated a warning for residents to leave the south.
The Hizbollah-Israel conflict has become the deadliest spillover of the US-Israeli war on Iran since the Iran-backed group fired at Israel in support of Tehran on March 2, with more than 900 people killed in Lebanon and one million displaced.
Thousands have also been wounded. Dr Wael Mroueh, the head of the Jabal Amel University Hospital in the southern port city of Tyre, told Reuters he had seen terrible injuries.
“Victims are coming without lower extremities, (needing a) craniotomy, with open wounds and all those things together. The victim is coming torn up and in bad shape,” Mroueh said.
As strikes escalated around Tyre, doctors had brought their families to stay with them at the hospital, Mroueh said. But with the roads at risk of closure, they were now starting to leave with their families to head north.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said yesterday that Israel’s military had destroyed two additional bridges over the Litani that he said Hizbollah had used to smuggle weapons and operatives south.
Katz described the action as “a clear message to the Lebanese government: the State of Israel will not allow such a reality.”
Israel destroyed a bridge in southern Lebanon on Friday and dropped leaflets in Beirut threatening Gaza-scale devastation.
Fears are growing in Lebanon that cutting off southern Lebanon from the rest of the country could pave the way for a large-scale Israeli military operation into Lebanese territory.
Yesterday, an Israeli military officer commanding troops operating in Lebanon told Reuters that his troops are “prepared to do all kinds of operations” if the military issued orders to establish positions as far as the Litani, nearly 30km north of the Israeli border.
The escalation in central Beirut, where Israel targeted four buildings in eight hours, followed what Hizbollah described as a large rocket attack against Israel late on Tuesday. Some 100 rockets were fired, Lebanese security sources said.
The Israeli military said preventative strikes had blunted the Hizbollah attack, and an overnight wave of strikes hit Hizbollah infrastructure in Lebanon.
The Israeli military statement said it had “struck assets” of a Hizbollah-run financial institution, Al Qard Al Hassan, in Beirut, and that the Israeli navy had targeted Hizbollah fighters in the city. It did not say exactly where.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli strikes on Al Qard Al Hassan branches during a previous war in 2024 amounted to war crimes, saying that Hizbollah-affiliated civilian institutions were not lawful military targets.
The air strikes in Beirut hit buildings within walking distance of the headquarters of the Lebanese government.
The targeted districts are historically mixed neighbourhoods where large numbers of Shi’ites live.
Hizbollah’s Al Manar TV said one of its broadcasters, Mohammad Sherri, had been killed along with his wife in one of the strikes in the Zuqaq Al Blat neighbourhood.
Beirut resident Abu Khalil said he had helped people flee their homes in the Bachoura district after Israel’s military posted a warning that it would hit the 10-storey building, before levelling it with a strike.
“It’s just an operation to hurt, to terrify people, to terrify children. What is there here?” he said.
The Israeli military issued no warnings before the three other strikes, which tore through two buildings in the Zuqaq Al Blat neighbourhood and another building in nearby Basta.
No fatalities have been reported in Israel from Hizbollah rocket and drone attacks. The Israeli military says two of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon.
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