Israel resumed striking Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday for the first time in three weeks. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA
Israel resumed striking Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday for the first time in three weeks, targeting an apartment building, while intensifying military attacks in south Lebanon to curb Hezbollah’s emerging drone threats.
The strike occurred ahead of a scheduled meeting at the Pentagon in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli military delegations to discuss consolidating the April 17 cease-fire and other security arrangements.
It hit a residential building in the Chouaifat area, setting a second-floor apartment on fire and inflicting casualties and damage.
Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the site amid initial reports that at least one person was killed and others were wounded.
It was not immediately clear who was targeted by Thursday’s strike.
The Israeli Army confirmed it carried out a targeted attack aimed at killing Ali al-Husseini of the “Imam Hussein Division” that coordinates between Iran and Hezbollah, according to the Israeli Ynet English-language website.
Ynet described al-Husseini as “a relatively low-ranking figure” and said that “the result of the attack was not immediately clear.”
Hezbollah reported the strike but did not say if any of its members was hit.
According to Ynet, the strike marks another escalation in Israel’s operations in Lebanon, targeting the broader Beirut area and carrying out “targeted killings” beyond southern Lebanon.
It was the first such attack since May 6 when Israel killed Malek Balout, a military commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, in a similar attack on the group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs — and the second breach of the April 17 cease-fire that was meant to spare Beirut at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Israeli officials said Trump’s request was related to fears that strikes in Beirut could harm ongoing negotiations with Iran, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel has expanded and intensified its attacks on southern Lebanon in recent days as Washington and Tehran seem close to concluding a deal that would also end the war in Lebanon — a move that reportedly would obstruct Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to remove Hezbollah’s threats.
Hezbollah’s intensified fiber-optic exploding drone attacks have become a growing concern for Israel, targeting its Army troops operating in southern Lebanon and reaching some of its northern border towns.
Ynet warned in a report that Hezbollah drones, although most are intercepted, have become a “ticking time bomb,” with the danger that they could reach central Israel.
Early Thursday, an Israeli strike hit an apartment in a residential building in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, killing five people, including two women and a reporter for Iran’s Press TV, and wounding 21 others, among them five children.
The Lebanese Health Ministry also reported that six people, including a displaced family of four, were killed when their car was hit by an Israeli strike in the coastal town of Adloun, north of Sidon.
A Lebanese Army soldier was killed in a similar strike in the Nabatiyeh district, raising to 3 the number of soldiers killed in south Lebanon in two days.
Israel continued to attack several sites in southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa region, issuing evacuation orders for dozens of villages while its troops crossed the Litani River in recent days.
The Israeli Army said it struck more than 135 Hezbollah targets in the past 24 hours.
The Iran-backed group, on its part, reported that its fighters continued to battle and prevent Israeli forces from advancing towards Zawtar al-Sharqiyah in the Nabiatiyeh district that overlooks the Litani River.
The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, or UNIFIL, expressed “deep concerns” over the recent escalation in the southern region, noting that the ongoing conflict is “causing deaths, injuries, and widespread destruction.”
It warned in a post on X that civilians continue “to bear the heaviest impact,” with hundreds of thousands having been forced to flee their homes, often at very short notice, adding that damage to homes, roads, and essential infrastructure was severely affecting daily life and recovery efforts.
UNIFIL counted 670 projectiles fired on Wednesday in what it described as “the highest level” since 17 April.
On Friday, Lebanese and Israeli military officials are scheduled to hold security talks in Washington, their first since Lebanon began direct, U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel to end the war with Hezbollah.
The talks will be followed next week by two days of diplomatic negotiations aimed at reaching a permanent political agreement.
