Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement are firing heavy rocket barrages at Israel, with Israeli media reporting that a building has been hit near Tel Aviv, after a powerful Israeli air strike killed at least 29 people in Beirut a day earlier.
Israel also struck Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs on Sunday, where intensified bombardment over the last two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in US-led ceasefire talks.
Hezbollah, which has previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it had launched precision missiles at two military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby.
Police said there were multiple impact sites in the area of Petah Tikvah, on the eastern side of Tel Aviv, and that several people had minor injuries. Television footage showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire in Petah Tikvah, and video from the medical service MDA showed cars burning.
The Israeli military (IDF) said Hezbollah had fired 170 rockets at Israel on Sunday, of which many were intercepted. At least four people had been injured by shrapnel.
Video obtained by Reuters showed a projectile exploding as it smashed into the roof of a building in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.
The military warned on social media that it planned to target Hezbollah 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.
Lebanon’s health ministry on Sunday raised the death toll from 20 to 29. It said 84 people had been killed in all on Saturday, taking the death toll to 3754 since October 2023.
The IDF did not comment on Saturday’s strike in the capital or say what it had attacked.
Israel went on the offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah 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 Hezbollah, 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 Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister 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 Hezbollah 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 local time.
Diplomacy has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. It requires Hezbollah to pull its fighters back around 30 km 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 Hezbollah, 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 euros ($A321 million) to support the Lebanese army.
https://thewest.com.au/news/conflict/rocket-lands-near-tel-aviv-after-israel-strikes-beirut-c-16864897
