Israel-Lebanon latest: Israel strikes central Beirut for first time in 18 years as death toll passes 1,000
The number of displaced people in Lebanon has surged from 300,000 to nearly one million
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Israel intensified its military campaign across the Middle East on Monday, striking central Beirut for the first time since 2006.
The attack brings the death toll from Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon to over 1,000 people in the last two weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
In just a few hours this weekend, the number of displaced people in Lebanon surged from 300,000 to nearly one million, said Nasser Yassin, Lebanon’s head of emergency disaster management.
A drone attack also reportedly killed three senior leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant group involved in the ongoing conflict with Israel.
Earlier, Israel said it bombed Houthi targets in Yemen, expanding its confrontation with Iran’s allies in the region, in response to Houthi missile attacks on Israel in recent days.
It stoked fears that Middle East fighting could spin out of control and draw in the United States.
On Monday Hamas said its leader in Lebanon had been killed in an Israeli strike. That adds to the seven Hezbollah commanders killed in targeted strikes in the past two weeks, as Israel seeks to wipe out the Iran-backed militia groups’ leadership structures.
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The militant group Hezbollah has confirmed another of its senior leaders has been killed in an Israeli airstrike - the seventh senior leader of the Lebanese militant group to be killed in eight days, including Hassan Nasrallah.
Nabil Kaouk was killed on Saturday, the Israeli military said.
Hezbollah also confirmed on Sunday that Ali Karaki died in the same attack as Nasrallah in Beirut on Friday.
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Residents flock to site of destruction
More than two days after a massive Israeli airstrike that killed the leader of the Hezbollah militant group, smoke is still rising from the smoldering wreckage.
People flocked to the site, some to check on what was left of their homes, others to pay respects and pray, and others simply to see the destruction.
Residents of Beirut heard up to 10 explosions following the Friday strike that targeted an area greater than a city block, reducing several residential buildings to a jumble of pancaked concrete and twisted steel. The buildings sank into the ground, leaving a cleared-out area nearly the size of a football field.
Weapons experts said the blasts and destruction left behind were consistent with the 2,000lb-class bombs (900kg).
Onlookers at the site today clambered over slabs of concrete, surrounded by piles of twisted metal and wreckage. Several craters, likely to be used by rescuers to penetrate under the site of the explosion were visible, some of them apparently up to 30m (100ft) deep.
A few Hezbollah workers were using a bulldozer to excavate around one of the craters. State security and investigators were nowhere to be seen.
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Supporters of Nasrallah mourn loss of slain leader
Supporters of Hezbollah and other Lebanese people who hailed the group’s role fighting Israel mourned the death of its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“We lost the leader who gave us all the strength and faith that we, this small country that we love, could turn it into a paradise,” Sophia Blanche Rouillard, a Lebanese Christian who carried a black flag to work in Beirut on Sunday, told Reuters.
An Arab Barometer poll in Lebanon earlier this year found that just 30 per cent trusted Hezbollah, whereas 55 per cent said they did not trust the group at all.
Those who said they trust the group rose to 85 per cent among Shia Muslims, but was just 9 per cent of Sunnis and Druze, and 6 per cent of Christians.
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