Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on March 2 when Tehran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel has responded with broad strikes across Lebanon and a ground offensive.
The health ministry said an Israeli air raid on south Beirut’s Jnah area killed at least five people and wounded 21 others. A Lebanese security source said four parked cars were hit.
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Another strike that hit a vehicle in Khaldeh, just south of the capital, killed two people and wounded three, the health ministry said in a separate statement.
Israel’s military said it had struck a “senior Hezbollah commander” and another member of the group in two separate strikes “in the Beirut area”, without naming the targets or giving detail on the exact locations.
Hezbollah has claimed dozens of attacks across the border and against Israeli forces inside Lebanon.
Around midnight (2100 GMT Tuesday) air raid sirens sounded across northern Israel’s Galilee region, according to the military’s Home Front Command.
This came hours after what Israeli media said was a barrage of more than 40 rockets fired by Hezbollah, which claimed multiple attacks on northern Israel in successive statements late Tuesday.
The militant group also said its fighters were engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli troops near the border early Wednesday, and claimed rocket fire targeting a group of soldiers in another area.
Israel’s military has reported several casualties among its ranks in recent days in south Lebanon, including four soldiers who were killed.
Lebanese authorities say the war has so far killed more than 1,200 people and displaced more than one million.
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Israel has signalled it intends to occupy parts of southern Lebanon, to create what officials have called a buffer zone seeking to push Hezbollah away from border areas.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that “all the houses in the villages adjacent to the border in Lebanon will be demolished.”
Katz’s Lebanese counterpart Michel Menassa decried plans for “a new occupation of Lebanese territory”, while Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced Israel’s deployment as an “illegal invasion”.
