Israel launches extensive strikes across multiple areas in Lebanon

Lebanon endured one of its deadliest days of the war as Israeli strikes killed 182 people and wounded 890, according to an initial official toll, while Beirut came under its fiercest bombardment since fighting began between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel said Lebanon was not included in the Iran-US truce announced overnight.

Live images broadcast by AFPTV showed thick plumes of smoke rising above Beirut, while AFP journalists reported scenes of panic in the streets and buildings collapsing onto residents without any prior warning.

The health ministry said 182 people had been killed and 890 wounded in the strikes, stressing that the toll remained preliminary.

An AFP photographer saw two people stranded on an upper floor as rescuers tried to reach them after part of the building had split open.

Late on Wednesday, Israel also struck Beirut’s southern suburbs, state media reported.

Israel’s defence minister said the assault targeted Hezbollah members across Lebanon and described it as the heaviest blow dealt to the group since a 2024 operation involving pager bombs.

Strikes hit Beirut simultaneously and without warning, sending pedestrians fleeing and drivers leaning on their horns as they tried to clear a path for ambulances, AFP journalists said.

“I saw the blast, it was very strong, and there were children killed, some with their hands blown off,” Yasser Abdallah, who works in an appliance store in central Beirut, told AFP.

One strike slammed into Corniche al-Mazraa, one of the capital’s main roads, bringing down a building and sending black smoke pouring into the sky as debris burned below.

The Lebanese capital was struck without any warning, officials said

Right to respond

Lebanese state media said Israeli strikes also hit the country’s south, east and the mountainous Aley region.

Two journalists were among the dead: Suzanne Khalil of Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar TV and Ghada Dayekh of the local radio station Sawt Al-Farah.

The wave of Israeli strikes came as Hezbollah said it was on the verge of a “historic victory” following the regional ceasefire announcement.

In a statement on Wednesday, Hezbollah said it retained its “natural and legal right to resist the occupation and respond to its aggression”, though it has announced no operations against Israel since the US-Iran ceasefire took effect.

After Hezbollah fired rockets toward Israel on 2 March in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Israel invaded southern Lebanon and launched large-scale air raids.

Israel renewed an evacuation order covering an area more than 40 kilometres inside Lebanon, saying “the battle in Lebanon is ongoing”.

Despite that order, a humanitarian convoy organised by a Catholic NGO delivered about 30 tonnes of aid to several Christian-majority villages in the south, an AFP reporter said.

Israel also struck the last coastal bridge connecting thousands of people still in the southern city of Tyre with Beirut.

It was the seventh bridge over the Litani river — which divides southern Lebanon in two — to be hit by Israel.

Since the war began, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,500 people and displaced over a million, according to Lebanese authorities.

Emergency crews work at the site after an air strike on Beirut

‘Regional peace’

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has served as a mediator in the regional conflict, said the two-week ceasefire between Iran and the United States applied “everywhere including Lebanon”.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said Lebanon was excluded, and a Lebanese official told AFP that authorities “have not been informed” that Lebanon was part of the truce.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said Lebanon “will continue to be discussed, I am sure, between the president and Prime Minister Netanyahu, the United States and Israel and all of the parties involved”.

In a statement, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said “the continued brutal Israeli shelling of Beirut, the mountain, the Beqaa and the south… confirms that Israel is pressing ahead with its aggression and dangerous escalation despite international efforts to contain tensions in the region”.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam appealed to the country’s allies to help bring the Israeli attacks to an end.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that “the US must choose – ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both”.

“The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”

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