Israeli strikes kill scores in Beirut; AP recounts day of attacks

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At 2:14 p.m. on Wednesday, an Associated Press reporter in Beirut said the first Israeli bomb fell nearby, and the sound of crashing metal quickly spread a network of smoke across the city. The reporter said the barrage left Beirut feeling “breathless” for the first time in years, after earlier rounds of bombing, pager detonations involving Hezbollah members, and the 2020 port explosion.

In the AP account, Israel said it hit Hezbollah command and control centers and that, within 10 minutes, it struck 100 targets in Lebanon, with most of them in Beirut. The reporter said it was initially “still not clear” what the targets were, and that Israel reported killing only an aide to Hezbollah’s secretary-general. The AP report also said late-night television compared the day’s casualties to one of the worst during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Beirut, when roughly 300 people were killed over some 10 hours of bombardment.

The AP reporter described scenes of confusion as bombs fell, including commuters trapped in traffic while trying to rush home with their families. The account said some people made frantic calls amid an overwhelmed communication network, while drivers stared at acrid smoke that billowed over Beirut, trying to choose routes under uncertainty about where strikes might come next.

In areas hit by the bombardment, the AP report said the scale of damage became visible quickly, with soot-covered faces and scenes of wreckage at busy intersections. The reporter said an AP photographer on Corniche al-Mazraa saw charred cars piled on top of each other and a body crushed inside one. The report also described a blast in Mar Elias that raised dust and debris across a full block, and said an elderly woman could be seen screaming in place after the dust cleared.

Sahar Charara, a resident described by the AP, said she had tried for years to avoid seeing victims of violence after minor injuries to her two children in the 2020 port explosion. But the AP account said she looked outside after the bombardment and saw “the despair of an entire city” on the face of an elderly woman who was still screaming. Charara told the AP that there was “so much horror and fear” in the woman’s screaming and later described what she saw as a “blank look of horror” among other neighbors after the attack.

The AP report also described the impact on families searching for loved ones as buildings were struck and collapsed. It said a strike hit near the home of Nahida Khalil close to the corniche, and soon afterward smoke rose from her brother’s building further up the street. The reporter said Khalil tried to reach her brother for 15 minutes without an answer, then received word from his wife that their building was hit, and that the family searched through thick black smoke before reaching the street to find half the building leveled and the rest slowly tumbling as rescuers looked for the missing.

As night approached, the AP account said people kept trying to determine where was safe, with some families sleeping in different rooms in case strikes continued overnight. Rescue efforts ran through the night, and the report said hopes improved at Khalil’s family building after rescuers found a 92-year-old man alive. By daylight Thursday, the AP said rescue workers were still searching for four or five more bodies, with some family members helping search among the rubble.

The AP report described the scale of fatalities at hospitals, where staff were trying to identify bodies, some burned or damaged. It said the AP collected names of 61 of the dead from death notices and its own reporting, listing people across Lebanon’s society, including restaurant figures, a poet, Lebanese soldiers, and members of Syrian refugee families. It said the last strike came shortly after midnight in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Mohammed Mehdi’s barbershop, operating for 30 years, was destroyed.

In the AP account, Mehdi said he shut down his shop as bombs began falling and described the final attack as the “101st” strike. He said Thursday, “They carried out 100 strikes. Ours was the 101st,” and said he was “still in shock” and did not know where events were going, adding that he lost his job and expects the loss to last.

The AP said correspondent Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to the report.