Israel has again pounded the Lebanese capital Beirut, striking the Bashoura district near parliament, as warplanes carried out air raids across the country and the military told residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately.
The latest warnings on Thursday took the number of southern towns subject to evacuation calls to 70 and included the provincial capital Nabatieh, suggesting another Israeli military operation was imminent against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The Israeli military claimed it hit the Iran-aligned group’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut amid a flurry of strikes on the Lebanese capital.
Israeli fighter jets “struck targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut, including terror operatives belonging to the unit, intelligence-gathering means, command centres and additional terrorist infrastructure”, the military said in a statement.
Overnight, Israel bombed central Beirut in an attack the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said killed nine people.
A Hezbollah-linked civil defence group said seven of its staff, including two medics, were killed in the Bashoura attack.
Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabari said the strike suggested Israel was broadening its attacks on Lebanon.
“We were at the site earlier today – there was absolute chaos and destruction,” Jabari said.
Israel has repeatedly hit Beirut’s southern suburb known as Dahiyeh, a densely populated neighbourhood. On Thursday, several explosions were heard and several large plumes of smoke were rising after heavy Israeli strikes.
Israel also said it struck a municipality building in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, killing 15 Hezbollah members and destroying many weapons.
The attacks come as Israeli troops – who entered Lebanon on Tuesday – also battled Hezbollah fighters in towns and villages in the south.
Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed nearly 2,000 people since they began late last year, most of them in the last two weeks, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Lebanese officials say more than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes so far.
Hezbollah continues attacks
Hezbollah also carried out new strikes. It said to have carried out at least 20 missile, rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli soldiers and military sites in northern Israel.
Hezbollah targeted what it called Israel’s “Sakhnin base” for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.
It said its guided missile hit a Merkava tank in the northern Israeli settlement of Netua, and a rocket salvo targeted Israeli soldiers in the al-Thaghra area in the outskirts of the town of Odaisseh on the border.
The group also said Israeli soldiers were targeted with a rocket salvo in Kafr Giladi in northern Israel, and claimed to have struck the military site and the settlement in Metula with 100 Katyusha rockets and six Falaq rockets.
The group’s fighters also hit the city of Safad with a salvo of rockets, Hezbollah’s statement said.
Meanwhile, it said its fighters detonated a bomb against Israeli forces infiltrating a southern Lebanese village and attacked Israeli forces near the border.
An Israeli infantry force has “attempted to infiltrate towards the cemetery of the town of Yaroun” in southern Lebanon when Hezbollah fighters detonated a Sejil bomb at the advancing force, the Lebanese armed group said, claiming the attack caused casualties.
Meanwhile, The Lebanese army said two soldiers were killed by Israeli strikes in separate incidents in south Lebanon on Thursday, one in an attack on a military post and another in a strike on a rescue mission with the Lebanese Red Cross in the town of Taybeh.
The army said that it returned fire when the military post was struck, a rare development for a force that has historically stayed on the sidelines of major conflict with Israel.
There are also growing concerns about getting medical supplies for the wounded, and the World Health Organization said 28 healthcare workers had been killed in Lebanon in the previous 24 hours.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said flight restrictions meant the agency would not be able to deliver a large planned shipment of trauma and medical supplies to Lebanon on Friday.
According to Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad, more than 40 rescuers and firefighters have been killed by Israeli fire in three days.
He told reporters that 97 “paramedics and firefighters” had been killed and 188 wounded since border fighting began last October.
As it pushes into Lebanon, Israel is also weighing its options for retaliation against Iran.
Tehran launched a missile barrage at Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for Israel’s assassination of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and its assaults in Gaza and Lebanon.
Meanwhile, a growing number of countries were evacuating citizens from Beirut as governments worldwide urged their citizens to get out.