BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – An Israeli airstrike on Saturday killed at least 11 people and injured dozens more in central Beirut, officials said, as diplomats scrambled to broker a ceasefire.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency response forces dig through the rubble looking for survivors. It said DNA tests were being conducted to identify the victims, adding that 63 people were injured. It was the fourth strike in the Lebanese capital in less than a week.
This escalation comes after US envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the countryside This week, in an attempt to broker a cease-fire agreement to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has descended into full-scale war over the past two months.
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, Israeli shelling has killed more than 3,500 people and injured more than 15,000 in Lebanon. The fighting resulted in the evacuation of approximately 1.2 million people, a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians were killed by rockets, drones and missiles in fighting in northern Israel and Lebanon.
Buildings reduced to rubble by dawn airstrike
The 4 a.m. airstrike destroyed an eight-story building and left a crater in the ground. One person was killed and another injured in a drone attack on Saturday in the southern port city of Tire, the state news agency said.
The agency said the victim was a fisherman. An Associated Press reporter who witnessed the strike from a nearby hotel overlooking the beach, who had seen the fishermen setting their nets beforehand, said both appeared to be young teenagers.
The Israeli military did not warn residents before the attack in central Beirut and did not comment on casualties. The authorities on Saturday warned some residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs that they live near Hezbollah facilities that will be targeted by the military in the near future. The warning, published in X, asked people to evacuate at least 500 meters (yards) away.
The military said it had carried out intelligence-based attacks over the past day against Hezbollah targets in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut where the group has a strong presence. Several command centers and weapons storage facilities were said to have been damaged.
At least 6 people, including children, killed in Gaza
Strikes continued in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. At least six people, half of them children, including two women, were killed in the southern city of Khan Yunis, according to an Associated Press reporter and staff at Nasser Hospital.
The death toll in the 13-month war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip exceeded 44,000 this week, according to local health authorities. The Gaza Ministry of Health does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but said more than half of the dead were women and children. The Israeli military claims, without providing evidence, that it has killed more than 17,000 militants.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. 250 more people kidnapped. There are still about 100 hostages in Gaza, and at least a third of them are thought to have died. Most of the rest were released during last year’s ceasefire.
Israeli military attack in Gaza caused great destruction It covers a wide range of coastal areas and many people are wondering When and how will it be rebuilt? About 90% of the country’s 2.3 million people have been forced to evacuate multiple times, with hundreds of thousands living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services.
The UN Humanitarian Office has warned that the number of households suffering from severe hunger in south-central Gaza is “rapidly increasing”. In Deir Al Bala, the local bakery was closed for five days this week and the price of a bag of bread rose to more than $13 as bread and flour disappeared from shelves before additional supplies arrived.
At least two women were shot and killed Saturday while waiting in line to buy bread in the city, relatives and witnesses told The Associated Press.
Heba Ajam, who was waiting in a bakery and witnessed the shooting, said one person was shot in the head and the other in the neck. It is unclear who shot him or why. Lack of food and security has forced some bakeries to close in south-central Gaza.
Reaction to ICC warrant continues
The strike in Gaza took place days after the ruling by the International Criminal Court. issue an arrest warrant It accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant on “reasonable grounds” of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The court also issued a warrant against Mohamed Deif, a Hamas official whom Israel claims was killed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the warrant, saying Israel “rejects with disgust this absurd and false act.”
Reactions around the world have been mixed.
Britain reiterated its support for the court but did not say whether it would arrest Netanyahu if he visited. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said the UK intends to comply with its legal obligations under domestic and international law, but declined to go into hypothetical questions about individuals.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday declined to comment, saying the court’s ruling was “not important” for Russia, which does not recognize its jurisdiction. Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials, accusing them of war crimes in Ukraine.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States fundamentally rejects the court’s decision. He said the Biden administration is “deeply concerned about prosecutors’ rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling procedural errors that led to this decision.”
The United States is one of dozens of countries that have not signed on or accepted the court’s jurisdiction. Others include Israel, Russia and China.
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Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil in Tire, Lebanon, Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem, Wafa Shurafa in Deir al-Bala, Gaza Strip, Mohammad Jajou in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, and Danika Kirka in London contributed to this report. Contributed.
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For more of AP’s war coverage, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
