Israel struck central Beirut 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 strike 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 of the blast. The sound of the explosion was heard around the city.
There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
Top Israeli political and military officials have continued to hint at a potential ground incursion into Lebanon, although some US and western officials have suggested that those are threats aimed at pressuring Hezbollah to capitulate rather than face an invasion.
On Monday, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told troops in the north of the country: “We will use all of our capabilities – including you.”
He said that the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, was a “very important step” but added that it was “not all” the military planned to do.
The declaration came as Gallant said that returning Israelis to their homes near the border with Lebanon was the “mission of the IDF”.
“That is what we will do, and we will deploy whatever is needed – you, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and from the land,” he said.
In a separate speech, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a direct threat to the Iranian leadership and told the people of Iran that Israel was ready to carry out attacks across the region in other countries if it felt that its own security was at risk.
“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu said. “There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country.”
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 to Nasrallah’s assassination 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, 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. Israeli drones hovered over Beirut for much of Sunday, with the loud blasts of new airstrikes echoing around the city.
In the first speech by a Hezbollah official since Nasrallah’s death, the militant group’s deputy chief, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said the group was prepared for an Israeli ground invasion and that it would continue to fight despite a series of devastating attacks on its leaders and top military commanders by Israeli forces.
“We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” Qassem said in a speech filmed in an undisclosed location.
“Despite the losses of its commanders, the attacks against civilians throughout Lebanon, and great sacrifices, we will not budge from our position,” Qassem said.
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.
Also on Monday, the Lebanese army announced that one of its soldiers had been killed in an Israeli drone strike that targeted a motorcycle at a checkpoint.
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 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. 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 spokesperson, 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.
Reuters contributed to this report
