Lebanon’s Hizbullah fired heavy rocket barrages at Israel on Sunday, with Israeli media reporting that a building had been hit near Tel Aviv, after a powerful Israeli air strike killed at least 29 people in Beirut on Saturday.
Israel also struck Beirut’s Hizbullah-controlled southern suburbs, where intensified bombardment over the last two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in US-led ceasefire talks.
Hizbullah, which has previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it had launched two precision missiles at military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby.
There were no reports from Israel of damage to the sites, but broadcaster Kan showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire in Petah Tikvah, east of Tel Aviv. Footage broadcast by the medical service MDA showed cars ablaze in Petah Tikvah.
Hizbullah fired 170 rockets at Israel on Sunday, according to the Israeli military, which said many had been intercepted, but at least four people had been injured by rocket shrapnel.
Video obtained by Reuters showed a projectile exploding on impact as it smashed into the roof of a building in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.
Israel warned on social media that it planned to target Hizbullah facilities in southern Beirut before strikes which security sources in Lebanon said demolished two apartment blocks. Afterwards, the IDF said it had hit command centres “deliberately embedded between civilian buildings”.
On Saturday, it had carried out one of its deadliest and most powerful strikes on the centre of Beirut, killing at least 29 people, Lebanon’s ministry for health said. The Israeli military did not comment on the strike or the target.
Israel went on the offensive against the Iran-backed Hizbullah in September, pounding the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs with air strikes after nearly a year of hostilities ignited by the Gaza war.
The Israeli offensive has uprooted more than one million people in Lebanon.
Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hizbullah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
US mediator Amos Hochstein highlighted progress in negotiations during a visit to Beirut last week, before travelling to meet Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and minister for defence Israel Katz, and then returning to Washington.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said a US ceasefire proposal was awaiting final approval from Israel.
“We must pressure the Israeli government and maintain the pressure on Hizbullah to accept the US proposal for a ceasefire,” he said in Beirut after meeting Lebanese officials.
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had convened a meeting of his security cabinet for 5pm (3pm Irish time).
Diplomacy has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 Hizbullah-Israel war. It requires Hizbullah to pull its fighters back about 30km from the Israeli border, and the Lebanese army to deploy in the buffer zone.
The Lebanese army said on Sunday at least one soldier had been killed and 18 more injured in an Israeli strike that caused severe damage at an army centre in Al-Amiriya near the southern city of Tyre.
The Israeli military said it regretted and was investigating the incident, and that it was fighting against Hizbullah, not the Lebanese army.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said the attack “represents a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire, strengthen the army’s presence in the south, and implement ... 1701″.
Borrell said the EU was ready to allocate €200 million to support the Lebanese army. – Reuters