Israel launched a third day of attacks in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, hours after Hezbollah confirmed a senior commander was killed in an airstrike on Beirut and a Lebanese minister said only Washington could help end the fighting.
Lebanese media reported that Israeli airstrikes targeted several areas in southern Lebanon from around 5 a.m., causing unknown casualties.
Hezbollah confirmed on the same day that its senior commander, Ibrahim Qubaisi, was among six killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Tuesday, as Israel had earlier claimed. Israel said Qubaisi headed the organization's missile and rocket forces.
Israeli attacks since Monday morning have killed 569 people, including 50 children, and wounded 1,835 in Lebanon, Health Minister Firas Abiad told Al Jazeera Mubasher TV. Prior to Tuesday's attacks, Monday's flurry of attacks marked Lebanon's highest daily death toll since its 15-year civil war began in 1975.
Israel's new attacks on Hezbollah have escalated the nearly year-old conflict between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, raising fears it could destabilize the Middle East. Britain has urged its citizens to leave Lebanon and said it would send 700 troops to Cyprus to help evacuate its citizens.
The UN Security Council said it would meet on Wednesday to discuss the conflict.
“Lebanon is in danger. The Lebanese people, the Israeli people and the people of the world cannot allow Lebanon to become another Gaza,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
US President Joe Biden appealed for calm at the United Nations, where the General Assembly is meeting this week. “All-out war is in nobody's interest. Even if the situation escalates, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” he said.
Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdalla Bou Habib criticized Biden's speech as “weak and unpromising” and said the United States was the only country “that can really make a difference in the Middle East and in Lebanon.” Washington is Israel's longtime ally and largest arms supplier.
The United States “is the key to saving us,” he said at an event hosted in New York City by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Bou Habib said up to 500,000 people were estimated to be displaced in Lebanon. He said the Lebanese prime minister hoped to meet with US officials in the next two days.
In Lebanon, displaced families slept in hastily set up shelters in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. Those unable to find shelter slept in cars, parks or along the beach as hotels quickly filled up or room rates became unaffordable for many families.
Fatima Shehab, who came from Nabatiyeh neighborhood with her three daughters, said her family had been forced to flee twice in quick succession.
“We first fled to my brother in a nearby area, but then three places near his house were bombed,” she said.
Some waited in traffic jams for hours to reach their destinations in the hope of finding safety.
Issa Baydoun fled her village of Sihine in southern Lebanon when it was bombed and traveled to Beirut in a motorcade with relatives, where they slept in their car on the side of the road after finding shelters full.
He denied Israel's claim that the attacks were aimed only at military targets.
“We fled our home because Israel was targeting and attacking civilians,” Baytown said. “We left our home to protect our children.”
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon said one of its staff members and her young son were among those killed on Monday in the Bekaa region, while a contract cleaner was also killed in an attack in the south.
An Israeli military attack struck the seaside town of Jiyeh, 75 kilometers (46 miles) north of the Israeli border, early Wednesday, two security sources said.
The United States and other mediators, Qatar and Egypt, have so far been unsuccessful in negotiating a ceasefire in the nearly year-old war in Gaza between Israel and Hezbollah's ally Hamas. Hezbollah has said it will stop firing rockets at Israel if Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza.
Massoud Pezechkian, president of Israel's arch-rival Iran, told the UN General Assembly that the international community “must secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and put an end to Israel's desperate brutality in Lebanon before it engulfs the region and the world.”
The Israeli military said its air force carried out “major strikes” on Tuesday against Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and dozens of launchers aimed at Israeli territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the attacks had weakened Hezbollah and would continue to do so. “Hezbollah has suffered successive blows to its command and control, its fighters and its means of fighting – all of them serious blows,” he told the Israeli military.
He accused the United Nations of shirking its responsibility to stop Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the offensive against Hezbollah, saying the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was leading Lebanon towards the “abyss.”
Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at the Dado military base in northern Israel and carried out drone and other attacks on the Atlit naval base south of Haifa. An Israeli military spokesman said six soldiers and civilians were wounded, most of them not seriously.
Syrian military sources said missiles believed to be Israeli were also fired at the Syrian port city of Tartus and were intercepted by Syrian air defense forces. The Israeli military declined to comment on the reports.
Since the Gaza war began in October, Israel has stepped up a years-long air campaign targeting Iran-aligned militia groups and their arms transfers in Syria.
As funerals were held in Lebanon on Tuesday for those killed in Israeli bombings, Mohamed Helal stood defiantly in the coastal city of Saksakiyeh as he mourned his daughter Juli.
“We are not afraid, even if they kill us, dissect us, destroy us,” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
