ISRAEL has struck Beirut’s southern suburbs without warning just days after a US-supported ceasefire agreement came into effect.
Lebanon’s state-run national news agency said two people were killed and 11 wounded in an attack when a residential building was hit in Dahiyeh, damaging four of its seven floors.
This comes despite a renewal of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. An agreement which continues to be in name only, as both sides have violated it.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the strikes were in retaliation for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group firing at northern Israel earlier, and that the attacks targeted “command centres” in the sprawling urban neighbourhoods.
“We are striking them very hard, and we know that Hezbollah is on the run,” Netanyahu told his cabinet. Despite the Israeli prime minister's claims, Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for firing at Israel.
Iran had warned that an attack on Beirut would renew full-scale war across the Middle East, and it wants a deal to include ending the war in Lebanon.
Israeli forces have now seized around a fifth of Lebanon in a ground invasion. Last week, forces reached the city of Nabatieh, capturing the strategic Beaufort castle, in a move condemned as "scorched-earth policy" by Lebanon's prime minister, Nawaf Salam.
According to Al Jazeera, the country's health ministry says that Israel's attacks have now killed at least 3,613 people and wounded 11,072 others between March 2 and June 7, and more than one million people within the country have been displaced.
This figure is expected to rise, and as of Sunday, the IDF has now ordered residents of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre to immediately evacuate in advance of attacks.
But according to International law experts, Israel's warnings are inconsistent and often overly broad.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention said: "The IDF frequently issues these warnings hours past midnight when everyone is asleep, often giving merely 30 minutes or less for civilians to leave.
"Residents were also told to vacate the areas immediately with no specified timeline.
"These orders...have been widely condemned by international bodies and human rights organisations as unlawful and inhumane."
Writing on Twitter/X about Sunday's attack, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said: "They [Israel and the US] are neither committed to a ceasefire nor believe in dialogue, and by demonstrating through the naval blockade and violation of agreements regarding Lebanon that they only understand the language of power.
"The naval blockade against the Iranian nation and America's green light today to the Zionist regime turn American and regime bases and assets in the region into legitimate targets. The hand of our armed forces is open, as always."
