Israeli airstrikes killed at least four people, including a child, near the main government hospital in southern Beirut on Monday, the Lebanese health ministry said.
The strike, which hit a car park of the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, injured another 24 people, according to the government.
The Israeli military said it struck a “Hezbollah terrorist target” near the hospital and the facility was not hit. It claimed that the Iran-back group “systematically embeds its terrorist assets into the civilian population“.
The military had warned people to evacuate or move away from multiple locations in southern Beirut but did not mention the hospital as one of the strike targets, BBC reported.
The bombing near the hospital was one of the 13 airstrikes conducted by Israel in southern Beirut in one of the most aggressive assaults on Lebanon in more than a week. Israel said it planned to carry out more strikes in Lebanon against a Hezbollah-run financial institution of Al-Qard Al-Hasan.
Lebanese authorities said at least 17 of its citizens, including four first responders, were killed on Monday before the Rafik Hariri strike.
Israeli airstrikes have pounded large areas of Lebanon for weeks, forcing over a million people to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The Israeli ground invasion, aimed at driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, has killed 2,483 people and injured 11,628 others, the ministry said.
Israeli authorities say 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights over the same period.
Another medical facility in Beirut’s suburbs, the Al-Sahel Hospital, was being evacuated following Israeli claims a Hezbollah cash bunker was located beneath it.
Israel’s chief military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, alleged Hezbollah had stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold at Al-Sahel Hospital. He said Israel would not strike the hospital but was monitoring the compound.
Hospital director Fadi Alameh, also a lawmaker with the Shi’ite Amal Movement party, called the claims false and asked the Lebanese Army to inspect and show that the facility only had operating rooms, patients and a morgue.
Hezbollah fighters continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, launching 170 projectiles that crossed the border by late Monday, Israel said.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s forces apologised for a strike that killed three Lebanese soldiers in southern Lebanon following condemnation from the Lebanese Armed Forces. Israel apologised for “these unwanted circumstances”, adding that its troops struck a Hezbollah truck with a launcher on it and later struck again after seeing another truck in the same area.
The Lebanese military later claimed that the targeted truck was owned by the army and that three operatives were killed.
The Lebanese army is not officially involved in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, US envoy Amos Hochstein on Monday held talks with Lebanese officials in Beirut on conditions for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah but said it was “not enough” for both sides to commit to UN resolution 1701, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
He called for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.