Israel attacked the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday for the first time since a November ceasefire ended its war with militant group Hizbullah, as hostilities mounted across the region following Israel’s resumption of its offensive in Gaza.
Israel’s military conducted a large strike on a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which it said was a drone storage facility used by Iran-backed Hizbullah.
A loud boom echoed above the capital, with a pillar of smoke rising from the area, large tracts of which had been reduced to rubble by Israeli air strikes during the peak of the war last autumn.
It was preceded by a warning from Israel’s military to evacuate the area, as it threatened retaliation for two projectiles launched from Lebanese territory earlier on Friday. One of them was intercepted, while the other projectile fell in Lebanon, Israel’s military said.
Arrests made at Gaza protest after Leinster House entrance blocked
Israel to step up pressure on Hamas and enable Trump’s ‘voluntary emigration’ plan, Netanyahu says
Hamas agrees to ceasefire proposal it received from mediators, its leader says
Israel flouting international law with forced evacuations in Gaza, UN says
Israel’s military also said it struck Hizbullah targets in southern Lebanon on Friday, following the projectiles’ launch. One strike killed at least three people, including one woman, and wounded 18 others, including women and children, Lebanon’s ministry of health has said.
The rockets from Lebanon set off air raid sirens in several Israeli border communities. Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz warned that “if there is no peace in Kiryat Shmona and the Galilee communities [in northern Israel], there will be no peace in Beirut either”.
Mr Katz added that “the Lebanese government bears direct responsibility” for Friday’s attack.
The Lebanese Armed Forces said it had identified the rocket launch site and was investigating. Hizbullah denied firing the rockets, accusing Israel of seeking a pretext to continue its attacks on Lebanon.
Lebanon’s prime minister Nawaf Salam called the strike “a dangerous escalation”. French president Emmanuel Macron, who was meeting his Lebanese counterpart in Paris on Friday, called the strikes “unjustified” and said he would call US president Donald Trump to discuss them.
Morgan Ortagus, the US’s deputy Middle East special envoy, told Asharq News that “the United States of America, President Trump, our administration fully supports the State of Israel responding to the broken ceasefire that emanated from Lebanon this morning”.
The escalation came after Israel this month ended a separate ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza by launching a series of air strikes that killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to local officials, and resumed ground operations in the shattered enclave. It had earlier halted deliveries of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into the enclave.
It also came after renewed US attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen last week, following the group’s threats to resume attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes, heightening fears that the region was sliding back towards full-blown conflict. The Houthis launched scores of attacks in the Red Sea last year, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and have also this month fired directly on Israel.
Israel’s evacuation warning in southern Beirut sent panicked residents of the densely populated area fleeing on foot as traffic clogged the streets.
It followed deadly Israeli air raids on southern Lebanon last Saturday, which killed eight people according to Lebanon’s health ministry, launched in response to rockets fired from Lebanese territory.
Israel mounted a ferocious air and ground offensive against Hizbullah after the Iran-backed movement fired towards Israel following Hamas’s October 7th 2023 attack from Gaza.
More than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and more than 140 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed in the fighting, which also displaced more than one million people in Lebanon and 60,000 in Israel.
Under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire that halted 13 months of fighting, Hizbullah agreed to move its weapons out of southern Lebanon, Israeli troops were to withdraw completely from southern Lebanon and the LAF would move in.
But Israeli troops have remained in five “strategic” positions inside southern Lebanon, insisting it was part of the deal. Each side has accused the other of failing to implement the deal in full, with Israel’s air force continuing to launch frequent air and drone strikes on what it says are Hizbullah targets across Lebanon. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
