Israel unleashes major strikes near Beirut as Lebanon campaign escalates

A spokesman for the Red Cross, Rodney Eid, said four paramedics were also injured in the attack in the village of Taybeh, and that the convoy’s movements had been coordinated with the U.N. peacekeeping mission UNIFIL, stationed along the Lebanon-Israel border. There was no immediate comment from UNIFIL, and the Israeli military said it had “opened fire” on “several armed militants” that were threatening its troops.

At the same time, Israel carried out punishing airstrikes in Beirut and its southern suburbs, where support for Hezbollah is strong. One strike targeted a Hezbollah media office, a day after the group’s spokesman made a rare public appearance in the city. And late Wednesday into early Thursday, at least nine people were killed in an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah-linked health institution in central Beirut, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. Hezbollah, which is Lebanon’s most powerful political and military movement, also runs a sprawling network of social, medical and economic services.

Later Thursday, the Israeli military ordered residents of specific buildings in the southern suburbs to evacuate, after which explosions thundered across the Lebanese capital, smoke rising above the skyline. The target of the strikes was not immediately clear.

The attacks came as Israeli troops and tanks battled Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, where the military said its goal is to destroy the group’s infrastructure so that it no longer poses a threat to Israelis living in the north. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting so far, the Israel Defense Forces said.

“It’s a full-scale operation on the ground,” said Sima Shine, an expert on Iran and its proxies at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “There are many soldiers” now in Lebanon, she said, raising the risk of more military casualties.

For nearly a year, Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, had traded near-daily fire across the border, exchanges that started when the militants began lobbing rockets in solidarity with Hamas fighters in Gaza. The tit-for-tat strikes displaced tens of thousands on both sides, but in recent weeks Israel escalated its campaign, ramping up airstrikes, targeting Hezbollah’s communications devices and killing the group’s longtime leader, Hasan Nasrallah.

Earlier this week, the IDF said it was sending ground troops into Lebanon, calling up two divisions and several reserve brigades for what it described as “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids.” But just days into the campaign, it was clear Israel had launched a full-scale invasion, with signs that the ground offensive could reach deep into Lebanese territory.

The military on Thursday announced more evacuation orders for a swathe of villages in the south. The statement from the IDF ordered residents in 25 communities to immediately leave their homes and head north of the Awwali River, about 35 miles from the Israeli border. It was the second evacuation order instructing people to flee to that side of the river, which is well beyond what was supposed to be a U.N.-monitored demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon about 18 miles from the frontier.

The widening offensive — both on the ground and by air — was taking an enormous toll on Lebanese civilians, local authorities and international aid organizations said. On Thursday, Lebanon’s Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who is responsible for coordinating the government’s emergency response, said in a phone interview that an estimated 1.2 million people have had to flee their homes, in what the United Nations described as “the largest wave of displacement Lebanon has seen in decades.”

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, at least 1,400 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon over the past two weeks when the violence escalated. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Thursday that at least 28 health-care workers in Lebanon had been killed in the past 24 hours.

“Many health workers are not reporting to duty as they fled the areas where they work due to bombardment. This is severely limiting the provision of mass trauma management and continuity of health services,” Tedros said.

He added that the WHO had planned to “deliver a large shipment of trauma and medical supplies” to Lebanon on Friday. “Unfortunately, this has not been possible due to the almost complete closure of Beirut’s airport,” he said.

In the Lebanese capital and its suburbs, Israel’s bombardment was dealing a severe blow to Hezbollah’s leadership. On Thursday, the IDF said it had killed the head of the group’s precision missile manufacturing project in Beirut earlier in the week.

But while Hezbollah has lost its deterrence against Israel, the group retains its capabilities as a guerrilla fighting force in the south, said Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese army general.

Israel believed that the villages in the south “were mostly destroyed” and that troops could “go in easily looking for Hezbollah infrastructure,” he said in a phone interview. But on Wednesday, the first full day of the invasion, Israeli forces walked into a “trap,” he said.

“Hezbollah hopes that the Israelis will go deeper into Lebanon,” he added. “In this case, it will be very hard for the Israeli army and Hezbollah has a lot of advantage.”

But earlier this week, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari disclosed that Israeli special forces had already conducted more than 70 cross-border raids in Lebanon in recent months to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure.

“There was an understanding of what was on the other side of the border,” said Shine. “But the big number of tunnels, I think, was underestimated and also the amount of weapons.”

The battles in Lebanon were also unfolding against the backdrop of wider tensions in the region, where countries were bracing for an Israeli response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday.

Iran fired a barrage of nearly 200 long-range missiles toward Israel, an attack it said was retaliation for the assassinations of Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Most of the missiles were intercepted both by Israel and the United States, and appeared to cause minimal damage. One Palestinian man was killed by missile debris that fell in the West Bank.

Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to strike back, saying Tehran “would pay” for the attack.

In Washington on Thursday, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said U.S. defense officials were “discussing” with the Israeli government “what a response to Iran could look like.”

“We know that there will be Israeli retaliation,” Shine said. “And talking to the Americans will take time.”

Pietsch reported from Washington, Sands from London and El Chamaa from Beirut. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Louisa Loveluck in London contributed to this report.