Sawt Falasteen - Lebanon says Israeli strike on Beirut seafront kills 8

The Israeli military said separately it had carried out strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs overnight against Hezbollah, which had announced a major new operation against Israel.

In a statement, the Lebanese health ministry said "the Israeli enemy strike on Ramlet al-Bayda" in the centre of Beirut killed eight people and wounded 31.

An AFP correspondent at the scene saw a damaged motorcycle and two damaged cars, with the area sealed off by security forces.

Blood stains were on the sidewalk, with a small hole in the ground.

"We saw dead people on the ground," said Aseel Habbaj, a displaced woman who had been sheltering in a nearby tent after fleeing Israeli bombings in other areas of Lebanon.

"We were all asleep in my tent, when suddenly we heard a noise," Habbaj told AFP. "We jumped up and went to see what was happening," before a second strike wounded her husband.

Her 40-year-old neighbour Dalal al-Sayed said she had opted to pitch her tent at the seaside after fleeing attacks in southern Lebanon "because the last thing we expected was Israel to hit Beirut".

Her family could not afford to rent apartments, she said.

"We won't leave, we will stay here even if we die," she added.

The seaside attack was the third in the heart of the capital since the Middle East war began.

Displaced people have been sleeping rough or in tents on the streets of Beirut, including in the seaside area of Ramlet al-Bayda, where some shelters were hit by shrapnel from Thursday's strike, according to the AFP correspondent.

Israel has also repeatedly hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, where the Israeli military said on Thursday it had struck 10 Hezbollah targets.

On Thursday, strikes on Aramoun, a residential area south of Beirut and outside of Hezbollah's traditional strongholds, also killed three people and wounded a child, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

- Hezbollah operation -

Hezbollah said early Thursday that it had fired off missiles at an Israeli military intelligence base in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and another military base south of Haifa.

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.

Israel, which kept up its strikes in Lebanon even before the war despite a 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah, has since launched air raids across Lebanon and sent ground troops into border areas.

Its offensive has killed more than 630 people, according to Lebanese authorities, while more than 800,000 people have registered as displaced, with around 126,000 of them staying in collective shelters.

Late Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called on Israel to halt its ground offensive in Lebanon and for Iran-backed group Hezbollah to "immediately" stop attacks, after speaking with the country's president Joseph Aoun.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said earlier that they had carried out a joint missile operation with ally Hezbollah against targets in Israel.

In turn, the Israeli military said early Thursday that "over the past hours, the IDF has begun a wide-scale wave of strikes targeting terror infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation across Lebanon".

It also said it hit "dozens of launchers" as well as Hezbollah intelligence and command sites in south Beirut.

It followed a string of Hezbollah statements saying its fighters fired barrages of rockets, advanced missiles and drones at towns, military bases and other locations, mainly in Israel's north.

On Wednesday, Israel pounded south Beirut and the country's south and east.

Authorities said a strike on an apartment in the densely populated Aisha Bakkar area in central Beirut wounded four people.

On Sunday, Israel hit a seafront hotel not far from Ramlet al-Bayda, saying it was targeting Iranian foreign operations officers. Iran later said the raid killed four of its diplomats.

N.AbuHussein--SF-PST