NNA reported that Israel has threatened to bomb crossings and bridges along the Litani River in southern Lebanon, an omen of possible intensification of its offensive against the Iran-supported Hezbollah and a cause of further mayhem in civilian transit across the nation.

Two Israeli air attacks on the centre of Beirut in the early morning on 18th March were claimed to have killed at least six people by Lebanon, and local media also reported attacks on the stronghold of Lebanese-Iranian Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of the city.

One of the strikes was struck on an apartment in the central zone of the Zuqaq Al-Blat, targeted by the Israeli forces last week, in the Beirut offices of the Hezbollah-linked financial institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

The overcrowded area is also in the proximity of the headquarters of the government and some of the embassies.

In the strike last week, the Israeli military had made a pre-emptive evacuation warning, but none before the most recent raid.

Another strike, according to media reports, was struck on the central Basta district, which is another highly populated zone that Israel had bombed in a 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Lebanese Minister of Health gave a preliminary figure of both attacks: six killed and 24 injured.

The ministry would need to check the identity of the human remains at one of the scenes through DNA testing.

Early Wednesday, the sound of multiple explosions was heard in Beirut by the AFP correspondents, and there were also Lebanese media reports about multiple strikes on the southern suburbs of the city, which is a stronghold of the pro-Iran militant group Hezbollah.

In response to US-Israeli attacks that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Lebanon was involved in the Middle East war when, on March 2, Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel.

Israel has retaliated with hardened onslaughts in various areas of Lebanon, ground attacks in the south, and strikes in the centre of Beirut a few times, with and without prior notice.

Tyre warning

On Wednesday morning, the army of Israel also threatened to attack a building in Aaqbiyeh, which is located in the coastal city of Sidon.

Late on Tuesday, the Israeli army issued an evacuation notice for the majority of the southern city of Tyre and large portions of the surrounding areas that surrounded it, stating that they would take decisive action against Hezbollah.

The disaster management unit of Tyre media coordinator Bilal Kashmar told AFP that panic followed the warning.

He said that most families had continued to stay, even in some of the “Palestinian refugee camps, despite the regular evacuation calls made by the Israeli army to swathes of south Lebanon, and that approximately 11,000 displaced people had resettled in the region.”

Tuesday, the state-run Lebanese news source, National News Agency, reported that Israel was striking different sites in the country.

The health ministry said, “four people were dead in a strike in the eastern city of Baalbek and four Syrians were dead in a strike at Jibsheet in the south.”

Israel announced late on Tuesday that it had hit targets in Lebanon, claiming they were Hezbollah launching rockets at infrastructure that were a follow-up to a series of air raid sirens in Israeli northern territory, with Hezbollah itself declaring that it had commenced a wave of attacks.

Lebanese officials said that since March 2, “over 912 have been killed by Israeli strikes and over one million people have been registered as displaced, more than 130,000 of whom remain in official shelters.”

A day after declaring that the south was in the initial phase of limited ground operations, the Israeli military on Tuesday reiterated its demand that residents evacuate an area of over 40 kilometres (25 miles) on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border.