At least 182 killed across Lebanon in large wave of Israeli strikes

BBC:

Israel has carried out a large wave of air strikes across Lebanon, which killed and wounded hundreds of people, while officials say the war against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah continues despite a ceasefire in Iran.

Israel described it as the largest wave of air strikes in this conflict, hitting more than 100 of what it called Hezbollah command centres and military sites in 10 minutes.

The southern suburbs of Beirut, southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley were all targeted.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least 182 people had been killed, a number that is likely to rise, and 890 wounded.

At the site of the largest air strike on Beirut, hours later, emergency workers were still searching the damaged buildings. Found amid the rubble, glimpses of interrupted lives: pictures of smiling families, pieces of clothing, school homework that was left unfinished.

Abdelkader Mahfouz was visiting his brother who had been wounded.

“There was a lot of body parts here. Only people are getting harmed. What should the people do. We can’t do anything,” he told the BBC.

The attacks happened after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied the assertion by Pakistan, which had mediated the deal between the US and Iran, that the ceasefire covered the conflict in Lebanon.

In Washington, US President Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt also said Lebanon was not part of the deal.

Hezbollah, which has not claimed any attack since the deal was announced, said the group had the right to respond and warned displaced families to wait for a formal ceasefire announcement before trying to return home.

The Lebanese presidency said it would continue “efforts to include Lebanon in regional peace”.

The latest escalation in the decades-long conflict between Hezbollah and Israel erupted when the group fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening stages of the war, and in response to the near-daily Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have continued despite a ceasefire, which was agreed in November 2024.

More than 1,700 people have been killed, including at least 130 children, so far as a result of the war, the Lebanese health ministry says, without distinguishing combatants from civilians.

Israel says it has killed around 1,100 Hezbollah fighters.

Over 1.2 million people have been displaced, or one in five of the population, most of them from Shia Muslim communities.