Israel carried out its heaviest attacks in Lebanon since the conflict with Hezbollah began last month, killing more than 250 people on Wednesday, even as the Iran-aligned group halted its attacks under a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
The bombings cast doubt on efforts for a regional truce, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian saying that a ceasefire in Lebanon was an essential condition of the agreement reached between Tehran and Washington.
On Wednesday afternoon, at least five consecutive attacks shook the capital Beirut, sending columns of smoke over the city, while the Israeli military claimed to have carried out the largest coordinated attack of the war. More than 100 Hezbollah command centers and military installations were hit in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon within ten minutes, according to Israel.
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Lebanon’s civil defense service reported that 254 people were killed and more than 1,100 were injured across the country. The highest number of deaths was recorded in Beirut, with 91 victims. The Ministry of Health, in turn, released a balance of 182 deaths across Lebanon and highlighted that the number is not yet definitive.
This was the deadliest day since the start of the war on March 2, when Hezbollah began firing on Israel in support of the Iranian government following a joint US and Israeli attack on Iran two days earlier. In response, Israel launched a large-scale air and ground campaign.
Reuters reporters saw civil defense teams using a crane to rescue an elderly woman from a building in west Beirut. Half of the building had been destroyed in an Israeli attack, leaving residents on the upper floors trapped.
Earlier, reporters reported that people on motorcycles were taking injured people to hospitals due to a lack of sufficient ambulances. One of Beirut’s largest medical centers said it needed donations of all types of blood.
“The scale of the killing and destruction in Lebanon today is simply horrific,” said UN human rights chief Volker Türk. “So much carnage, just hours after the ceasefire agreement with Iran, defies comprehension.”
On Wednesday night, an attack hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to a Reuters live broadcast.
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Israel and US say Lebanon is not included in the truce
In a televised speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire with Iran and that the Israeli military continued to attack Hezbollah “with force”.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and US Vice President JD Vance also said on Wednesday that Lebanon is not included in the truce.
“I think this is the result of a legitimate misunderstanding. I believe the Iranians thought the ceasefire included Lebanon, but it didn’t,” Vance told reporters in Budapest.
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Prior to that, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key intermediary in the US-Iran ceasefire negotiations, had said the truce would include Lebanon.
In a statement, Hezbollah condemned what it called Israel’s “barbaric aggression” and said the attacks reinforce the group’s right to respond.
Hezbollah halted attacks on Israeli targets early on Wednesday, three Lebanese sources close to the group told Reuters. Hezbollah’s last public statement about its military activity had been released in the early hours of the morning, stating that it had attacked Israeli troops inside Lebanon on Tuesday night.
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“Hezbollah was told it was part of the ceasefire — so we complied with it, but Israel, as always, violated it and committed massacres across Lebanon,” the group’s senior lawmaker, Ibrahim al-Moussawi, told Reuters.
Another Hezbollah lawmaker, Hassan Fadlallah, said there would be “repercussions for the entire agreement” if Israeli attacks continued.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has warned the US and Israel that it will give a “response that will cause regret” if attacks on Lebanon are not stopped.
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Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned Wednesday’s bombings and said French President Emmanuel Macron said he was willing to exert diplomatic pressure for Lebanon to be included in any ceasefire.
Most of Wednesday’s attacks occurred in civilian areas, Lebanese officials said. Hours before the bombings, the Israeli military had issued warnings for some neighborhoods in southern Beirut and southern Lebanon. No alert was given for the central region of the capital, which was also affected.
Containment zone
After the attacks, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee stated, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), that Hezbollah had left its traditional Shiite stronghold in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, in southern Beirut, and moved to religiously mixed areas in other parts of the country.
He said Israeli forces would pursue Hezbollah “wherever it is.”
The Israeli army said it attacked a commander of the group in Beirut, without providing additional details.
Israel also struck, on Wednesday, the last bridge connecting southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, a senior Lebanese security source said. The structure passed over the Litani River, which runs about 30 kilometers north of the border with Israel.
An Israeli military spokesman declared that the area south of the Litani is “disconnected from Lebanon.”
Israel has said it intends to occupy the region as a “containment zone”.
Israel has also attacked hospitals and power plants in the area, and thousands of Lebanese civilians who remain there report facing shortages of food and medicine.
