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Israeli forces struck an apartment building in central Beirut on Wednesday, Lebanese state media reported, the latest in a series of aerial attacks on the Lebanese capital that have escalated sharply since Hezbollah resumed hostilities against Israel ten days ago in response to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike, and no casualties were reported at the time. A separate Israeli attack on Sunday targeted a room at the Ramada Hotel in Beirut’s coastal Raouche district, killing five senior commanders in the Quds Force, the extraterritorial arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. The IDF said the commanders had been “hiding in a civilian hotel” while coordinating financial transfers and intelligence operations in support of Hezbollah and Hamas. Ten people were injured in the Raouche attack, Lebanon’s health ministry said, and the hotel was also housing civilians displaced by the ongoing fighting.
Among those killed in the Ramada strike was a senior Quds Force official responsible for transferring $770 million from Iran to Hezbollah over the past year, according to the IDF. Israel said it had issued advance warnings to hotel residents before carrying out the attack, and that most occupants had evacuated. The Lebanese government and international human rights groups have continued to raise concerns about strikes on civilian infrastructure.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Rakan Nassereddine said Israeli strikes had killed 394 people in Lebanon in the week following the resumption of hostilities on March 2, including 83 children and 42 women, with nine rescue workers also among the dead. Those figures predate several subsequent strikes, and the toll is expected to rise.
The renewed conflict in Lebanon is a direct consequence of the broader regional war triggered by the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had led Iran since 1989, was killed at his compound in central Tehran during those strikes, with his death confirmed by Iranian state media the following day. Hezbollah launched its first strikes on Israel since the November 2024 ceasefire on March 2, targeting a missile defense site south of Haifa, with Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem vowing the group would not leave “the field of honor and resistance.”
Israel responded the same night with strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, issuing evacuation orders to dozens of villages across the south. Israeli forces have since carried out more than 250 strikes across Lebanon, ordered civilian evacuations in several border villages, and deployed ground forces deeper into southern Lebanese territory. Targets have included weapons depots, financial institutions associated with Hezbollah, and what the IDF described as command infrastructure in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district.
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A Hezbollah intelligence commander, Hussein Makled, was killed in overnight strikes in Beirut on March 2, and a subsequent strike eliminated Reza Khazaei, chief of staff of the IRGC’s Lebanon Corps. The IDF said last week that it had also killed Daoud Alizadeh, the acting commander of that corps, in a separate strike in Tehran.
The Lebanese government, which has stated it is working toward disarming Hezbollah, publicly condemned the group’s renewed missile and drone attacks on Israel, accusing it of pulling Lebanon into a regional war without governmental consent. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned of an impending “humanitarian disaster” as displacement figures mounted.
More than half a million people have been displaced within Lebanon since fighting resumed, according to Lebanese government registration figures, with the actual number believed to be higher.
Following an Israeli military warning that IRGC-linked officials in Lebanon would be targeted if they did not leave the country, Reuters reported that more than 150 Iranian nationals — including diplomats and their families — had departed Lebanon in recent days. The Lebanese government separately announced on March 5 that it would detain and expel anyone in the country connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
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Human Rights Watch said on Monday that it had gathered evidence of Israeli use of white phosphorus in residential areas of southern Lebanon, in what it described as a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel has not publicly responded to that allegation.
France is leading international mediation efforts, though no Israeli response to Lebanese proposals for direct negotiations has been reported. Lebanese officials said the only written guarantees received so far from Israel concern the protection of Beirut’s international airport and the road leading to it. No ceasefire talks are known to be formally under way.
