At least 22 people were killed and 117 others injured in Israeli strikes on Beirut, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported on October 10 after an Israeli strike on a school sheltering Palestinians in Gaza killed dozens of people.
Lebanon’s state news agency NNA reported two evening air raids in central Beirut. The first targeted an eight-story building and the second a four-story building that completely collapsed as a result of the strike, NNA said.
A Lebanese security source quoted by Reuters said at least one senior Hezbollah figure was targeted in the attacks, which were the third on Beirut since Israel started a military campaign in southern Lebanon last month targeting the Iran-allied Hezbollah militia and sparking fears of an all-out regional war.
Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV reported after the strikes that an attempt to kill Wafiq Safa, a top security official with the group, had failed. It said that Safa had not been inside of either of the targeted buildings.
Hezbollah kept up rocket fire into Israel on October 10. The military said several drones heading toward Israel were intercepted.
Earlier on October 10 an Israeli strike on a school in the Gaza Strip killed at least 27 people, Palestinian medical officials said, while a separate Israeli strike hit UN peacekeeper headquarters in southern Lebanon, prompting Italy to summon the Israeli ambassador.
The Israeli military said it carried out a “precise strike on terrorists” who had a command and control center embedded in the school.
“This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law,” a military statement said.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the EU, has denied such accusations. People who had been sheltering at the school said the strike hit a meeting of aid workers and injured 54 other people.
Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across Gaza as it battles Hamas militants even as the war broadened to include Hezbollah in Lebanon amid rising tensions with Iran.
In a separate incident on October 10 the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers. The nationality of the injured peacekeepers was not released.
The UN peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL said in a statement that Israeli forces also fired on a nearby bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, damaging vehicles and a communication system.
The Italian Defense Ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador in protest, and Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told a press conference that “hostile acts committed and repeated by Israeli forces against the base…could constitute war crimes.” Crosetto added that Italy has asked for an official explanation “because it was not a mistake.”
The French Foreign Ministry said that while no French solider was injured in the incident, it also demanded an explanation.
The Israeli military announced earlier on October 10 that it had eliminated another important Hezbollah member as it kept up its attacks against the Iran-backed group.
Adham Jahout, a member of Hezbollah’s Golan Terrorist Network was killed in an air strike in the area of Quneitra in Syria, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said.
Jahout was relaying intelligence from Syrian regime sources to Hezbollah and facilitating operations against Israel in the Golan Heights, the IDF said.
Israel annexed the Golan Heights after capturing them from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war. The annexation has not been recognized by most countries.
Separately, the Israeli military said on October 10 that it had eliminated two Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon and its warplanes attacked munitions depots in the Beirut area and in southern Lebanon. It did not immediately reveal the identities of the two commanders.
Hezbollah, a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, while the European Union blacklists its armed wing but not its party, which has seats in the Lebanese parliament.
The latest strikes came as the United States, Israel’s main ally, warned against bombardments in Lebanon similar to those that caused large-scale destruction in Gaza as Israel retaliated against Hamas following the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist group’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, that left more than 1,100 people dead.
Israel’s bombardment of central and northern Gaza in recent days has killed dozens of people and trapped thousands in their homes, Palestinian officials say.
October 7: The Hamas Attack That Changed Israel And Sparked War
Israel on October 7 marked the somber anniversary of the Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages. Some 100 hostages remain in captivity, many of whom are believed dead. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the EU.
“There should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza and leaves a result anything like Gaza,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists on October 9.
The warning came after U.S. President Joe Biden emphasized in a call on October 9 with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the need for a diplomatic arrangement for the return of both Lebanese and Israeli civilians to their homes on both sides of the border.
The United States warned Israel on October 9 against launching a military action in Lebanon like the one it has conducted in Gaza, and U.S. President Joe Biden emphasized in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the need for a diplomatic arrangement for the return of both Lebanese and Israeli civilians to their homes on both sides of the border.
Biden also condemned Iran’s ballistic-missile attack on Israel on October 1, a White House statement said.
Biden “affirmed Israel’s right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone, while emphasizing the need to minimize harm to civilians, in particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut,” the statement said.
