Israel has said it killed a Hezbollah commander in the first attack on Beirut in weeks.
Israeli forces said the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ahmad Ghaleb Ballout, was killed in an air strike that heavily damaged a residential building in Beirut's southern suburbs on Wednesday evening. There was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.
The explosion in Beirut's southern suburbs, known as Dahieh, which was heavily destroyed by Israeli bombardment, was the latest breach of a tenuous US-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon that came into effect last month.
The Radwan Force is a Hezbollah special operations unit. Israel has accused its members of being responsible for firing at northern Israel and at troops operating in Lebanon.
Lebanese official media said three missiles were fired at an apartment in the Haret Hreik area in Wednesday's attack. Roads leading out of Beirut's southern suburbs became clogged with traffic as people left after the strike. Many families had only recently returned to their homes in the capital's suburbs after the fragile ceasefire took hold.
Despite the ceasefire, Israeli attacks and demolitions across southern Lebanon are ongoing.
The Israeli military earlier on Wednesday ordered people to leave a dozen more Lebanese towns and villages, including in the Bekaa Valley.
The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah – in effect since April 16 – continues to be regularly broken by both sides.
In the Bekaa Valley, the village of Zellaya was among those where a displacement order was imposed. Soon after, at least five people were killed in an air strike, including the village mayor Ali Ahmad, his wife and two children.
The valley, which stretches across eastern Lebanon, was where Hezbollah was founded in the 1980s, and it remains an important support base for military and civilians.
While the Bekaa has been attacked in the current war, there have been fewer strikes there than in Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon.
Israeli air strikes on the village of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon district killed at least four and wounded 13 on Wednesday.
The Israeli military has been issuing displacement orders for about a dozen towns and villages a day for the past week, in the area north of its buffer zone, or so-called Yellow Line, in south Lebanon.
The Yellow Line amounts to Israel's latest occupation of the south of the country, extending up to 10km into Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah, which initially said it would adhere to the ceasefire, has responded to Israel's expanded strikes by attacking Israeli positions in southern Lebanon. On Wednesday, the Israeli army reported two soldiers were wounded by explosive drones launched by Hezbollah near Israeli soldiers deployed in the border region.
Also on Wednesday, there was extensive Israeli drone activity over Beirut, which had been relatively quiet in recent days.
The Lebanese government, under pressure from the US, is seeking direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Wednesday that "Lebanon is not seeking to normalise its relations with Israel, but rather to make peace". He said the "minimum requirement" in the negotiations is to obtain a "clear timetable" for Israel's withdrawal from the south of the country.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a day earlier that a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon appears “achievable” in the near term and blamed the current violence on Hezbollah.
“There’s no problem between the Lebanese government and the Israeli government,” Mr Rubio said at a White House media conference. “Israel doesn’t claim any land in Lebanon belongs to them. And, by and large, I think a peace deal between Lebanon and Israel is imminently achievable.”
He said the reason Israel attacks Lebanon is “because Hezbollah is hiding in some house launching rockets against Israelis, and then they get hit".
