Israel’s intense barrage of airstrikes on Wednesday struck without warning deep inside the Lebanese capital of Beirut, reducing some apartment blocks to rubble and blowing buildings open to the elements in parts of the city that had long been relatively spared, an Associated Press report said. The AP described neighborhoods across central Beirut, including busy commercial strips and districts along the city’s seafront, as well as areas that had felt removed from the fighting beyond the constant buzz of drones and the sound of occasional explosions.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the bombardment killed more than 300 people and wounded over 1,800 others, with most casualties in Beirut and in its southern suburbs. The ministry said the day marked the deadliest day in the past five weeks of the Israel-Hezbollah war, underscoring the scale of damage and casualties during a period in which the conflict’s impact had been concentrated mainly in other parts of Lebanon.
The AP said it was not immediately clear what the strikes targeted. Later, the Israeli military said that Iran-backed Hezbollah had repositioned into residential and commercial areas far from the Shiite militia’s usual influence around Beirut’s southern outskirts, where yellow Hezbollah flags appear on lampposts and where Israeli evacuation orders had reportedly been in place for weeks.
In one of the reported incidents, a strike hit along Corniche al-Mazraa, a main artery of the city, razing an apartment building near a popular shop selling nuts and dried fruit. The AP report said the strike also set parked cars ablaze, including some with drivers inside. In other parts of central Beirut, additional strikes flattened multi-story buildings in hilly residential districts and in seaside neighborhoods.
The AP said another deadly strike hit the hilly district of Tallet El Khayat, flattening a multi-story building near an upscale mall. Residents told AP that among those killed was an award-winning Arabic poet and her husband, according to the report.
In the seaside district of Ain el Tineh, the AP said further strikes pulverized an apartment building also home to an exotic plant shop near the residence of Lebanon’s speaker of parliament and overlooking the city’s only public beach. The AP report described the wave of destruction extending from seafront areas into surrounding blocks and commercial-residential zones.
The AP said additional strikes blew up apartments in Mar Elias, a mixed commercial and residential area, and wiped out part of a building that housed a snack shop and a hair salon in the Caracas district. It also reported damage along Beirut’s coastal corniche, and said smoldering ruins remained in the densely populated neighborhood of Basta near a school sheltering displaced people, where the attack killed, among others, a young mother and her two sons.
Note: This article is based on a single Associated Press report and preserves the attribution and uncertainty present in that source about the military’s claimed targeting rationale.