Israel’s devastating assault on Lebanon rages on, killing at least 16 people in the capital Beirut and in south Lebanon, a punishing front in the wider war launched by the United States and Israel on Iran.
An Israeli strike early on Friday hit a car in Jnah, a coastal neighbourhood in southwestern Beirut, and killed one person, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said.
An Israeli strike also hit an apartment in the Nabaa neighborhood, home to a sizable Armenian community, leaving it engulfed in flames, with no casualties immediately reported.
It was the first time this area has been struck in this conflict or during the 2024 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
A total of 687 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon in just less than two weeks, including 98 children. More than 800,000 people have also been forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks.
Following the strikes, the Israeli army claimed it had targeted a Hezbollah member in Beirut.
“They were going after cash reserves by Hezbollah, which they said were in the basement of some of these buildings,” said Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from the capital.
Both neighbourhoods are far from the southern suburbs of Beirut, which the Israeli military has declared unsafe and issued forced displacement threats for, and continues to pound daily.
Later on Friday, an Israeli drone hit a residential apartment building in Bourj Hammoud, a suburb to the northeast of Beirut, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).