Israel Kill Another Hezbollah Chief In Rare Strike On Central Beirut

• Attacks target senior figures in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Israel struck central Beirut, Lebanon for the first time since 2006 early on Monday, hours after dozens of aircraft bombed Yemen in a long-range raid, as it pursued a rapidly expanding war on multiple fronts.

The Beirut strikes targeted three senior figures in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group associated with a series of high-profile aircraft hijackings in the 1970s.

The leftwing faction, which has not played a significant role in the continuing conflict between Israel and the Shia militant group Hezbollah, said its military and security commanders in Lebanon, and a third member, were killed.

Initial footage from the scene showed two storeys of an apartment building completely blown out, and onlookers running towards the building. Two bodies could be seen lying on the street on top of a car outside the building, seemingly ejected by the force from the blast.

The sound of the explosion was heard around the city but there was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.

The latest strike came as the UN reported that 100,000 people had fled Lebanon for Syria since the latest escalation in the war and as CNN quoted an unnamed Biden administration official who said the US had changed its military posture in the Middle East amid concern Iran might attack Israel in response for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas said its leader in Lebanon was killed on Monday in an Israeli strike on the country’s south.

“Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amine, the leader of Hamas … in Lebanon and member of the movement’s leadership abroad” was killed in an airstrike on his “home in the al-Bass camp in south Lebanon”, a Hamas statement said.

The Beirut strike, carried out using a drone, according to a source quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), hit near the Kola intersection, a popular reference point in the city, where taxis and buses gather to pick up passengers.

Israel had confined its strikes on Lebanon’s capital city to its southern suburbs. The airstrike threw into doubt which areas of Beirut were still safe from Israel’s expanding aerial campaign.

This is as Israeli drones continued to hovered over Beirut for much of Sunday, with the loud blasts of new airstrikes echoing around the city.

Hezbollah’s Deputy Chief, Sheikh Naim Qassem, was expected to give an address at noon local time (0900 GMT) on Monday, the group’s al-Manar television channel announced, the first such speech since the strike that killed Nasrallah. Details of Nasrallah’s funeral have not yet been officially announced.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 105 people had been killed and a further 359 injured by Israeli strikes across the country on Sunday. More than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, it said, without saying how many were civilians. The government said a million people – a fifth of the population – have fled their homes.

On Sunday, Israel launched a wave of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, fuelling fears of a slide towards a devastating regional conflict on multiple fronts.

The attack on the port of Hodeidah in Yemen involved dozens of Israeli planes and appears to have targeted fuel facilities, power plants and docks at the Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports. It was one of the biggest such operations yet in the near year-long crisis in the region.

Houthi media reported the strikes had killed four people and wounded 33, even as residents said the strikes caused power cuts in most parts of Hodeidah.

Israeli military officials said the raid targeted the Houthis, who have fired at Israeli targets for months in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthis have also targeted international shipping in the Red Sea. On Saturday, they launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel’s main international airport when Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was arriving.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah confirmed that Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of its central council, was killed on Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader killed in Israeli strikes in a little over a week.

The group also confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in the airstrike on Friday that killed Nasrallah. Three days of mourning were announced, starting on Monday, after the killing of Nasrallah.

Hezbollah denied claims that Abu Ali Rida, the commander of the group’s Bader Unit in south Lebanon, had been killed. Rida is the last remaining senior military commander of Hezbollah who remains alive.

Israel has vowed to keep up the assault and says it wants to make its northern areas secure again for residents who have been forced to flee Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Joe Biden, asked if an all-out war in the Middle East could be avoided, said: “It has to be.” The US president said he would be talking to Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, the White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon had “wiped out” Hezbollah’s command structure, but he warned that the group would work quickly to rebuild it.

“I think people are safer without him walking around,” Kirby said of Nasrallah. “But they will try to recover. We’re watching to see what they do to try to fill this leadership vacuum. It’s going to be tough … Much of their command structure has now been wiped out.”

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Kirby sidestepped questions about whether the Biden administration agreed with how the Israelis have targeted Hezbollah leaders.

The White House continues to call on Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a 21-day temporary ceasefire floated by the US, France and other countries during the UN general assembly last week. – With The Guardian and Reuters report