Israel has launched its heaviest air attack on Beirut in almost a year of conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, levelling a number of buildings in a southern suburb in what Israeli media reported as an attempt to kill Hezbollah’s leader and key Iran ally, Hassan Nasrallah.
Six loud explosions were heard across the Lebanese capital late on Friday afternoon, and multiple vast plumes of smoke were visible from as far as Batroun, a city an hour’s drive away.
The Lebanese health ministry said two people had died and 76 were injured, describing this as a preliminary toll. More casualties are expected as rescue workers clear rubble.
Video of the strikes suggested they were carried out with ground-penetrating munitions known as bunker busters. In some footage, a vertical jet of flame was visible as a bomb appeared to explode beneath the ground.
Israeli media reported that Nasrallah was the target and that the military was checking whether he had been hit. Sources close to Hezbollah told Reuters he was alive.
The strikes came shortly after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told the UN general assembly in a bellicose speech marked by the walkout of dozens of diplomats that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah would continue despite international efforts to secure a three-week ceasefire.
Targeting Nasrallah – even if he was not harmed – marks a staggering escalation on the Israeli side. He represents Iran’s most important regional asset and has long been seen as linchpin in the so-called axis of resistance. The presence of Hezbollah’s large rocket arsenal on Israel’s northern border has long acted as a deterrent to an Israeli attack on Iran and its nuclear programme.
As night fell in Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s office said he had personally approved the strike, issuing a photograph of Netanyahu with his military secretary and chief of staff on the phone in his New York hotel.
His office also announced that he had cut short his US visit and would return immediately to Israel.
Underlining the significance of the strike, Israeli media reported that the operation was watched as it unfolded by the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in the command centre of the Israeli air forcein Tel Aviv, along with the Israeli chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, and other top commanders.
Although some Israeli media suggested that the US had been informed minutes before the attack, that was emphatically denied by the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, who said that Israel had informed the Biden administration as the attack was taking place.
The explosions were so powerful that they rattled windows and shook houses in settlements 18 miles north of Beirut.
Nearby witnesses quoted by the Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour described seeing substantial fissures open in the ground. Ambulances were seen heading to the scene of the explosions, sirens wailing.
The IDF’s spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said in a video statement that Hezbollah’s headquarters was “intentionally built under residential buildings” in Beirut’s southern Dahieh area “as part of Hezbollah’s strategy of using Lebanese people as human shields”.
He said: “Israel is doing what every sovereign state in the world would do if they had a terror organisation that seeks their destruction on their border, taking the necessary action to protect our people so that Israeli families can live in their homes, safely and securely.”
Not long before the attack, thousands of people had gathered in Dahieh for the funeral of three Hezbollah members, including a senior commander, killed in earlier strikes.
Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, who is also in New York, was following developments as information arrived, according to a statement from his office.
The statement said Mikati was in touch with the commander of the Lebanese armed forces, Joseph Aoun, and had ordered “the full mobilisation” of emergency resources after reports of a large number of victims.
“This new aggression demonstrates that the Israeli enemy is mocking all the international appeals in favour of a ceasefire from the international community,” Mikati said.
Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon earlier on Friday killed about 25 people, taking the death toll this week to more than 720, health authorities said.
The Israeli military said it carried out dozens of strikes over the course of two hours around the south on Friday, including in the cities of Sidon and Nabatieh. It said it was targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and infrastructure. It said Hezbollah fired a volley of rockets toward the northern Israeli city of Tiberias.
A year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated sharply this week, raising fears of an even more destructive conflict. More than 90,000 people have been reported as newly displaced in Lebanon this week, according to the UN, adding to more than 111,000 already uprooted by the conflict.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said 30,000 people had crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the last few days, 80% of them Syrians. Well over 1 million Syrians fled to Lebanon during the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the UNHCR representative in Syria, said roughly half of the people who had fled were children and adolescents. He said about 80% were Syrians returning to their home country and the rest were Lebanese.
“Now these, of course, are people who are fleeing bombs and who are crossing into a country that has been suffering from its own crisis and violence for 13 years now,” he told reporters in Geneva by video from the Lebanon-Syria border. He said Syria was facing “economic collapse”.
“I think that this just illustrates the kind of extremely difficult choices both Syrians and Lebanese are having to make,” he said.
Hezbollah began firing at Israel on 8 October last year as the Gaza war began, declaring solidarity with the Palestinians. Hezbollah has said it will cease fire only when Israel’s Gaza offensive ends.
The IDF said on Friday it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen that set off air raid sirens across Israel’s populous central area, including Tel Aviv. Another missile from Yemen landed in central Israel about two weeks ago.