Lebanon reeled Thursday after the deadliest day in more than five weeks of renewed war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, as rescue workers in Beirut and elsewhere searched for survivors and Israel warned of escalation.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, warned that continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon would bring “explicit costs and STRONG responses,” while insisting that a two-week ceasefire in the Iran war extended to Lebanon. Israel has disagreed.
Israeli strikes on Wednesday without warning killed at least 203 people and wounded more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said. Israel's military said it targeted Hezbollah sites, but several strikes hit densely packed commercial and residential areas during rush hour, leading to widespread civilian casualties. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called the attacks “barbaric.”
Israeli strikes continued targeting southern Lebanon on Thursday. Israel also said it had killed an aide and nephew of Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem, Ali Yusuf Harshi, in the strikes. Hezbollah did not immediately comment.
In Beirut, people waited anxiously on the ragged edges of search and rescue work, covering their faces from the dust. Exhausted firefighters sat on a charred car amid collapsed buildings.
Lebanese Civil Defense spokesperson Elie Khairallah told The Associated Press that a wounded woman was found alive under the rubble overnight in the seaside neighborhood of Ain Mreisseh, and a man was found alive in his collapsed apartment building in the southern suburbs.
Mohammad Chehab, a Syrian man from Deir el-Zour, said six of his 10 family members had been found dead in a destroyed building.
“They’ve been searching all day” for the rest, he said.
At hospitals, survivors and doctors described the carnage.
“I thought I was dead. What happened? A big flash of light struck my face and eyes and I found someone flying over and landing next to me. He was dead,” said Rabee Koshok from his bed at Makassed hospital in Beirut. He had been in the commercial district of Corniche al Mazraa when a strike hit a nearby building.
Dr. Wael Jarrosh said the hospital had received around 70 injured patients within 10 minutes of the blasts. Two people died and five remain hospitalized, including three in intensive care, Jarrosh said.
“This has destroyed us psychologically,” the doctor added. “We have to stay prepared so that we can serve our families and the injuries that come in.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said strikes would proceed “with force, precision and determination." Israel's military has accused Hezbollah members of moving out of the group’s main areas of influence in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, and blending into civilian areas.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon will file an urgent complaint with the U.N. Security Council, calling the attacks a “blatant violation” of international and humanitarian law.
Salam added that the Lebanese cabinet has ordered security forces to tighten control over the capital by “enhancing the state’s full authority across Beirut and restricting arms to legitimate forces.”
Even before the renewed war, Lebanon's government had been seeking Hezbollah's disarmament. The issue has inflamed tensions among Lebanese who are deeply divided over Hezbollah and its arsenal.
“All the targeted areas are safe residential Lebanese areas,” said Melhem Khalaf, a reformist legislator representing Beirut, while watching a bulldozer clear rubble. “What we are witnessing is a massacre against civilians.” Khalaf was critical of Israel’s strikes but also of Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon back into war.
More than a million people have been displaced by the war, many from the south and Dahiyeh. Israel's military has issued sweeping warnings for the population to leave those areas, followed by heavy bombardment.
The Israeli army has also launched a ground invasion in the border region. The death toll in Lebanon has reached 1,739, the health ministry said, with 5,873 wounded.
Meanwhile, the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria returned to service Thursday, five days after the Israeli military warned of plans to strike it, alleging that Hezbollah was using it to smuggle military equipment. Lebanese and Syrian authorities denied the claim.
More than 200,000 people have fled Lebanon into Syria since the war resumed.
