Israeli strike near Beirut kills 2 while raids target southern suburbs

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on Bshamoun, south of Beirut, killed two people on Tuesday, Lebanon’s health ministry said, while strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs continued throughout the night.

“The Israeli enemy raid on the town of Bshamoun in the Aley district resulted, in a preliminary toll, in the martyrdom of two citizens and the injury of five others,” the ministry said in a statement.

Located in the mountainous, Druze-majority Aley district southeast of Beirut, Bshamoun lies outside of Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.

Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East war when Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a US-Israel attack.

Israel has since launched strikes across Lebanon, killing at least 1,039 people, and sent ground troops into the country’s south.

Separately, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israel’s overnight attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway, had targeted seven areas.

“Enemy warplanes launched seven raids overnight on the southern suburbs, targeting the areas of: Bir al-Abed, Al-Ruwais – outskirts of Al-Manshiyya, Haret Hreik, Sayyed Hadi Nasrallah Highway, Saint Therese, Burj al-Barajneh and Al-Kafaat,” NNA said on Tuesday.

The Israeli military on Monday renewed its calls for residents of the southern suburbs to evacuate.

A spokesperson for the UN secretary-general estimated this week that the ongoing war has displaced about one in five residents of Lebanon.