Israel strikes near Beirut as two medics killed in South Lebanon

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military pressed on Saturday with its dayslong bombing campaign targeting an area near Beirut dominated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, while in the country’s south, Israeli airstrikes killed two paramedics, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Throughout the day, there were multiple waves of attacks on the Dahiya, a predominantly Shiite area south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. After sundown, powerful blasts were felt and heard in the Beirut city center. Israel, which issued a new flurry of evacuation warnings to local residents, has said these strikes are targeting facilities used by Hezbollah and has accused the group of hiding “terrorist infrastructure” in residential areas.

The past few days have seen one of the heaviest waves of Israeli bombardments on the southern outskirts of Beirut since the beginning of the war. There was no immediate word on casualties from the Saturday attacks.

At the same time, there was growing anger within Lebanon over the mounting numbers of rescue workers killed by Israel in recent weeks. On Saturday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry condemned the killings of rescue workers as “barbaric attacks” and urged the international community to “ensure respect for international humanitarian laws.”

Israeli strikes have killed almost two dozen rescuers in the past week, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. And more than 145 health care workers in Lebanon have been killed while on duty since the war began in mid-September, according to the World Health Organization.

One of the paramedics was killed Saturday in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Tibnit, according to the Health Ministry, which said that two more paramedics in the same town were missing and unaccounted for. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the deaths.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, also denounced the killings of at least a dozen paramedics this past week in a single airstrike on a building used by emergency workers in the village of Douris in the Baalbek region of northeastern Lebanon.

“We deplore the attack on the Lebanese Civil Defense center in Douris village,” he said in a statement Friday. “The center has been massively damaged. Attacks on health care are becoming the new normal in conflicts. This must stop — everywhere!”

In Israel, air raid sirens sounded across the country’s north Saturday as Hezbollah launched new drone and rocket attacks over the border. Israel’s military said the munitions either fell in areas that caused little damage or were intercepted by its air defense systems, creating thundering midair explosions that could be heard in the major northern city of Haifa.

Hezbollah began near-daily rocket attacks on Israel last October in solidarity with its ally, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. The conflict intensified in mid-September when Israel stepped up attacks on Hezbollah, culminating in a ground invasion of Lebanon on Oct. 1.

The war has driven roughly 1 million Lebanese people from their homes, and Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on the north of Israel have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis.

The dayslong bombing campaign of the neighborhoods south of Beirut has complicated U.S. diplomatic efforts for a truce. The Biden administration has recently renewed its efforts to broker a cease-fire. But so far there has been no public indication that Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, are willing to accept Israel’s demands, which include the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel also wants any cease-fire deal to stipulate that it has the right to attack Hezbollah if the group violates the agreement, a demand rejected by the armed group and the Lebanese government, which is not a party to the conflict.

A prominent Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met Friday with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss the cease-fire efforts, according to the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon. Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, passed messages to Hezbollah from Khamenei that said he supported ending the war with Israel, according to two Iranians affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The messages also assured Hezbollah that Iran would continue its support and help the group rebuild its forces and recover from the war, they said.

The Iranians, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the supreme leader had also told Hezbollah to accept the terms of a cease-fire deal demanding it move its forces north, in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolution 1701, which ended a past round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Nabil Berri, a veteran Lebanese politician and the speaker of parliament, was quoted Saturday in Al Joumhouria, a Lebanese newspaper, expressing cautious optimism about a potential deal. But he said a recently presented American proposal contained elements that Lebanon’s government considered unacceptable.

He told the newspaper it would be “impossible for us to accept” an agreement that included a stipulation permitting Israel to attack Lebanese territory again in the future.

“Anything that would affect our sovereignty, even discussing it is rejected,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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