BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Sunday that an Israeli strike on a hotel in central Beirut killed at least four people, with Israel saying it had targeted commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on Monday, when Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during US-Israeli strikes.
Israel, which has kept up strikes targeting Hezbollah despite a 2024 ceasefire, launched multiple waves of strikes this week across Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas.
Early Sunday, the Lebanese health ministry said an Israeli air strike hit Beirut’s city centre, targeting “a hotel room”, killing four people and wounding 10 others.
The Israeli military earlier announced it had “begun an additional wave of strikes in Beirut”, saying it was targeting the capital’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
A separate statement later said Israeli forces carried out a “precise strike” in Beirut, targeting “key commanders” in the Quds Force, the Guards’ foreign operations arm.
The statement, which did not specify the exact location, accused the unidentified commanders of planning “terror attacks against the State of Israel and its civilians”.
Israel “will continue to precisely eliminate the commanders of the Iranian terror regime wherever they operate”, it said.
An AFP photographer at the bombarded seafront hotel saw one room on the fourth floor with shattered glass and charred walls, while security forces cordoned off the site.
The hotel’s area of Raouche is a major tourist destination and had remained untouched by Israeli strikes during the war between Israel and Hezbollah, which ended with a ceasefire in November 2024.
Dozens of panicked guests were fleeing the hotel with their luggage, the photographer said.
Two witnesses said they had heard a loud bang, before ambulances rushed to the scene.
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The area along the Mediterranean coast is home to dozens of hotels, now overcrowded with displaced people who fled their homes elsewhere in Lebanon due to the ongoing fighting.
This is the second Israeli attack on a hotel in the Beirut area this week.
On Wednesday, an Israeli air strike hit a hotel in the predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Hazmieh outside Beirut, near the presidential palace and several government ministries and diplomatic missions.
AFPTV live footage from Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday also showed smoke following what appeared to be an air strike.
Hezbollah meanwhile claimed rocket attacks early Sunday targeting Israeli forces and a city across the border, “in response to the criminal Israeli aggression that affected dozens of Lebanese cities and towns”, according to statements from the group.
Hezbollah also said its fighters were engaged in clashes with Israeli forces near the border town of Aitaroun.
Air raid sirens sounded in several areas of northern Israel, with no immediate reports of any casualties or damage.
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