BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli airstrikes Saturday killed at least 11 people and injured dozens in central Beirut, officials said, as diplomats scrambled to broker a cease-fire.
Lebanon's Health Ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency responders dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, it said, adding that 63 people were wounded. The strikes were the fourth in the Lebanese capital in less than a week.
The escalation comes after U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the region this week in an attempt to broker a cease-fire deal to end the more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has erupted into full-on war in the past two months.
Israeli bombardment has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by rockets, drones and missiles in northern Israel and in fighting in Lebanon.
The strikes at 4 a.m. destroyed an eight-story building and left a crater in the ground. Also on Saturday, a drone strike killed one person and injured another in the southern port city of Tyre, according to the state-run National News Agency.
The agency said the victims were fishermen. An Associated Press journalist, who saw the strike from a nearby hotel overlooking the beach, said he had watched the fishermen set up nets beforehand and both appeared to be young teenagers.
Israel's military did not issue a warning for residents prior to the strikes in central Beirut and did not comment on the casualties. It warned residents Saturday in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs that they were residing near Hezbollah facilities, which the army would target in the near future. The warning, posted on X, told people to evacuate at least 500 meters (yards) away.
The army said that over the past day it had conducted intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. It said it hit several command centers and weapons storage facilities.
Strikes also continued in Gaza on Saturday. At least six people, half of them children and including two women, were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to AP reporters and staff at Nasser Hospital.
The death toll from the 13-month-long war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas has surpassed 44,000 this week, according to local health officials. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused heavy destruction across wide areas of the coastal territory, leading many to wonder when or how it will ever be rebuilt. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services.
The United Nations humanitarian office warned of a “stark increase” in the number of households experiencing severe hunger in central and southern Gaza. In Deir al-Balah, local bakeries shut down for five days this week and the price of a bag of bread climbed above $13, as bread and flour vanished from shelves before more supplies arrived.
At least two women were fatally shot on Saturday while waiting in a line for bread in the city, relatives and witnesses told the AP.
Heba Ajam, who was waiting at the bakery and saw the shooting, said that one was shot in the head and another in the neck. It was unclear who shot them and why. The lack of food and security have forced some bakeries to close in central and southern Gaza.
The strikes in Gaza come days after a decision by the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, based on “reasonable grounds” that they bear responsibility for a war crime and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The court also issued a warrant for top Hamas official, Mohammed Deif, who Israel claims it killed.
Netanyahu condemned the warrant, saying Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.”
Global reactions have been mixed.
The U.K. reiterated its support for the court but stopped short of saying whether it would arrest Netanyahu if he visited. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office has indicated that Britain would comply with its legal obligations under domestic and international law, but refused to get into hypothetical issues about individuals.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Friday refused to comment, saying that the court’s rulings are “insignificant” for Russia, which doesn’t recognizes its jurisdiction. The ICC last year issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and a number of other top Russian officials, accusing them of war crimes in Ukraine.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States fundamentally rejects the court’s decision. She said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision.”
The U.S. is one of dozens of countries that did not sign and do not accept the court’s jurisdiction. Others include Israel, Russia and China.
Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an associate fellow in the International Security Program at London’s Chatham House think tank, said that even if Netanyahu won’t be able to travel to many European countries, he’ll go to the United States. That will push him closer to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I don’t think Netanyahu will be arrested because he’s not going to take the risk of traveling to any country that will be able to issue an arrest warrant. So in that sense, it limits his freedom of movement, but that will only strengthen his ties to Donald Trump,” she said.
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Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil in Tyre, Lebanon, Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem, Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Mohammad Jahjouh in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
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Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war