Israeli strikes across Lebanon, including central Beirut

Lebanon was drawn into the war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.

Israel, which kept up its strikes in Lebanon even before the war despite a 2024 ceasefire, has since launched air raids across Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas -- an offensive that has left 570 people dead according to the health ministry.

Lebanese authorities said Wednesday that 780,000 people had been registered as displaced, with more than 120,000 staying in government shelters.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) said that "the enemy targeted an apartment in the Aisha Bakkar area" in central Beirut, a densely populated neighbourhood close to one of the city's biggest shopping malls.

AFPTV's live broadcast showed the sound of an air strike followed by a fireball erupting in an apartment within a multi-storey residential building in Beirut.

An AFP correspondent saw destroyed walls in a building's seventh and eighth floors, with damaged cars nearby and security forces present at the scene.

When the strike hit, "I ran from room to room, pulled my wife and daughter out of the rooms and hid them behind a wall, then the second strike hit", said Fawzi Asmar, owner of a bakery on the street where the strike took place.

Samer Knio, a civil defence paramedic, said glass and debris fell on his team as they were evacuating the dead and wounded from the scene, "but God protected us".

Mohammad, who lives in the the building next to the one struck, told AFP: "I blame the state. It has to know who is entering these areas and what's going on."

As Israeli strikes displace hundreds of thousands of people, some residents fear being caught in Israeli air raids targeting people taking shelter nearby.

"We don't know who they're targeting. Maybe someone related to something, maybe not," Amal Hisham, 46, said. "Who do I blame? Who do I not blame?"

So far the health ministry has announced an initial toll of four people wounded in the Beirut strike.

It marks the second central Beirut strike, after the Israeli army last week targeted a hotel in the heart of the capital, with Iran later saying that strike killed four of its diplomats.
Southern suburbs
On Wednesday morning, the Israeli army resumed strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, according to the NNA, after issuing a new evacuation warning to residents of two neighbourhoods.

A live broadcast by AFPTV showed black smoke rising from three sites over the southern suburbs following strikes.

The Israeli army announced Wednesday that overnight it had carried out "an additional wave of air strikes in the Dahieh area of Beirut", referring to Beirut's southern suburbs.

AFPTV images show destroyed buildings and neighbouring apartment blocks severely damaged by the strikes.

Israeli air raids also continued in southern and eastern Lebanon.

Seven people were killed in a strike on the east Lebanon town of Tamnin al-Tahta, according to the health ministry.

The health ministry on Wednesday said that "successive raids launched by the Israeli enemy" on the southern town of Qana in Tyre district overnight killed five people and wounded five others.

In Hennawiyeh, also in the Tyre district, the ministry said another overnight Israeli strike wounded two people, and a follow-up attack killed them, along with a rescuer who came to the scene.

The ministry also announced the death of a Red Cross paramedic from wounds sustained when "the Israeli enemy targeted the ambulance he was travelling in... on a rescue mission" two days earlier in Majdal Zoun, Tyre district.

The health ministry on Wednesday said 14 healthcare workers are among the 570 people killed in Israeli strikes since the war came to Lebanon on March 2.