At least nine people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a central Beirut medical centre early on Thursday, marking the second attack on the city's centre this week. The strike hit a facility belonging to the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Organisation in the Bachoura district, with witnesses reporting a missile flying overhead before the explosion.
Lebanese health officials confirmed the death toll, adding that 46 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Beirut over the previous 24 hours. The Islamic Health Organisation reported seven of its staff, including two medics, among the dead. Israel described the strike as a 'precise' airstrike, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued evacuation warnings for multiple locations throughout the night, including the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed last week.
The attack came a day after the IDF suffered its deadliest day on the Lebanese front in a year, with eight soldiers killed in ground combat in southern Lebanon. The soldiers, including officers from the commando brigade, clashed with Hezbollah in a village north of the Israeli border community of Misgav Am. Two additional soldiers from the Golani brigade were killed in a separate incident.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a condolence video, stated: 'We are at the height of a difficult war against Iran's axis of evil, which wants to destroy us … This will not happen because we will stand together and with God's help, we will win together.'
Separately, a strike on the Syrian capital Damascus reportedly killed Hassan Jaafar Qasir, Nasrallah's son-in-law, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The wider region awaits Israel's response to Iran's missile barrage two days earlier, with US President Joe Biden saying he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites.
