Israeli strikes have hit a hotel in a Beirut suburb and a residential complex in eastern Lebanon, killing at least 11 people, as Israel’s military issued more forced displacement orders across the country and advanced farther into Lebanese territory.
Israeli forces on Wednesday bombed the Comfort Hotel on the border of Hazmieh and Baabda, which are part of greater Beirut, Lebanese state media said.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 items
list 1 of 3Israel launches strikes on Beirut as troops advance into southern Lebanon
list 2 of 3Lebanon’s ban on Hezbollah ‘activities’: bold but difficult to implement
list 3 of 3School turned into shelter for families displaced in southern Lebanon
end of list
Footage verified by Al Jazeera showed a building with blown-out windows and walls and debris strewn everywhere.
Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from Beirut, said the attack happened without any warning, indicating that it could have been an attempted assassination.
“The Israeli military is yet to say exactly who or what it was attempting to target,” Pett said.
There were further attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah in the densely populated civilian area.
The Israeli military said it is carrying out more attacks on what it called Hezbollah “infrastructure in Beirut”.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported an Israeli air raid on the southern town of Khiam, shortly after Israel’s army said it had started to carry out another wave of strikes on Lebanon’s south.
More than 50 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since Monday, when Hezbollah launched its first strike on Israel in more than a year in response to the Israeli-US war on Iran.
Lebanese army officials told Al Jazeera that at least four people were wounded on Wednesday, including one in critical condition.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson issued new forced displacement orders for residents of the Haret Hreik neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The spokesperson released a map of the Lebanese capital with buildings marked in red and warned that people should flee the site, claiming it was “affiliated with Hezbollah”.
The Israeli military also issued an “urgent warning”, calling on people to leave 16 towns in southern Lebanon. It later called on residents in an additional 13 towns to evacuate.
This comes in addition to forced displacement orders issued on Tuesday for more than 50 towns across southern Lebanon, which would allow Israel to establish a larger buffer zone there.
Sources told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the Israeli army had advanced into Lebanese territory from seven positions along the border, a day after the Israeli military said it was conducting a ground incursion as part of a “forward defence” measure.
Lebanese state media reported that the Israeli military entered Khiam in southern Lebanon, about 6km (3.7 miles) from the border, as the town came under continuous shelling.
In the eastern city of Baalbek, which is close to the Syrian border, at least five people were killed and 15 were wounded in a strike on a residential building in the al-Matraba neighbourhood.
Footage from the scene, verified by Al Jazeera, shows the debris of a collapsed multistorey building as rescue workers look through the rubble.
Syria’s land and sea ports authority said it closed its border crossing with Lebanon for departures after receiving a warning from Israel that it might target the crossing.
A media official at the Jdeidet Yabous border crossing was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying it remained open for arrivals as Syrians fled from Lebanon, which took in up to two million Syrian refugees during its neighbour’s 2011-2024 war.
Al Jazeera Obaida Hitto, reporting from the Syria-Lebanon border, said Syrian officials recorded more than 25,000 people who crossed into the country over the last two days. “Most of the people we spoke to had been on the road for a day or two, trying to reach the border crossing,” Hitto said, adding that Syrian officials expected the inflow to continue.
A separate Israeli air attack on Aramoun and Saadiyat in the Mount Lebanon area killed at least six people and wounded eight, according to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television.
Lebanese Minister of Social Affairs Haneen Sayed told Al Jazeera that the government registered about 65,000 displaced people who were being accommodated in 350 shelters. Another 10,000 to 20,000 people were estimated to be living on the streets or with relatives or friends.
Sayed said that so far, the number was lower than during nearly two months of war with Israel in 2024 when up to 1.2 million people fled their homes. “We’re not there, and hopefully we won’t reach that number,” Sayed said.
Hezbollah fires at northern Israel
Hezbollah claimed early on Wednesday to have fired rockets at Israeli forces in the town of Metulla in northern Israel after carrying out a missile attack on the naval base in Haifa.
It later claimed to have carried out an attack targeting an Israeli military base near Israel’s northern city of Safed and to have struck an Israeli tank in the southern Lebanese town of Houla, near the border.
The group also said it launched a swarm of attack drones at the “Tel Hashomer base”, which it described as a General Staff headquarters southeast of Tel Aviv, at about 12:00 GMT (2pm local time).
Hezbollah said the attack was carried out “in response to the criminal Israeli aggression that targeted dozens of Lebanese cities and towns, including the southern suburbs of Beirut”.
The Israeli military said it identified several projectiles from Lebanese territory and most were intercepted, except for one that fell in an open area.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israel came under simultaneous attacks from Hezbollah and Iran. Israeli defences intercepted a munition fired from Iran, causing shrapnel to fall in central Israel, according to local media.
Two Israeli soldiers were “moderately” wounded by anti-tank fire in southern Lebanon and were transferred to hospital, the military said.
Earlier, the army said it would “not tolerate any presence of representatives of the Iranian … regime in Lebanon” and gave them 24 hours to leave the country or face attacks.
Human Rights Watch said people who are not directly involved in hostilities cannot be targeted under international law.
“The suggestion that Israeli forces will target Iranian government officials who do not leave Lebanon is both deeply disturbing and an admission of an intent to commit a war crime,” the watchdog said in a statement.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be escalating.
“There is no front line and no mediation or diplomatic effort to end it,” she said.
