Deadly Israeli strike in Beirut kills at least 20

BEIRUT – A massive Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in a central district of Beirut early Saturday killed at least 20 people, thundered across the city and underlined fears in Lebanon that the war is escalating days after diplomatic talks aimed at a cease-fire stirred hope of the conflict’s end.

The strike, on the Basta neighborhood, was announced with a succession of booms followed by the roar of warplanes – sounds that recalled for many the massive strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in late September. Saturday’s attack completely demolished a multistory building, residents said, while damaging or destroying other homes and buildings nearby in a densely-populated quarter of the city.

More than 60 people were wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the attack or its target. Its Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, did not post a warning prior to the strike, as he sometimes does. It occurred about 4 a.m., when most of the city was asleep.

Samar Zeineddine, 20, had been awake, speaking to her friend Nancy Awad, who was in the building, on the first floor. Then the line was cut, around the time of the strike. Hours later, she sat close to the debris pile on a green plastic chair, sobbing, as the rescuers searched for residents, with both orange stretchers and white body bags close at hand.

By nightfall, all that had been found of Nancy and 10 other people in the apartment were body parts, she said.

Beirut had enjoyed a moment of relative quiet earlier in the week, during a visit to the city on Tuesday and Wednesday by Amos Hochstein, a Biden administration envoy. Hochstein, who is trying to secure a cease-fire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, indicated that progress was being made as he set off for Israel for further talks.

“He was very optimistic before he left,” a Lebanese official involved with the negotiations said Wednesday, adding that the Lebanese government, which had reacted positively to the envoy’s 13-point draft, was expecting to hear back from Hochstein within a day or two.

By Saturday night, there was “no news from Amos” the official wrote in a message, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. The reasons for any impasse were unclear, but Israeli officials have continued to insist on their right to strike Hezbollah even after a cease-fire, a stipulation Lebanese officials said would amount to a breach of sovereignty.

It seemed that Israel was “not done yet with their military operations” in Lebanon, the official said. Now a cease-fire was a “matter of time.”

The war grew more furious over the last few days. Israel has carried out airstrikes across Lebanon, including in central Beirut and its southern suburbs, and in the Bekaa Valley, where dozens of people have been killed.

Twelve health workers in Lebanon were killed in Israeli strikes Friday, including the director of Dar al-Amal University Hospital and at least five paramedics, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Hezbollah has announced rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel as well as on Israeli troops fighting in southern Lebanon. The attacks have come during push by Israel to expand its ground invasion in several places, including the southeastern town of Khiam and on Lebanon’s western coast, on the approach to the city of Tyre.

In Beirut, the magnitude of Saturday’s strike led to speculation that Israel had been targeting a Hezbollah leader. A parliament member representing Hezbollah, Amin Shiri, who visited the site Saturday afternoon, said no one from Hezbollah was present in the building, only a “large number of martyrs and injured.”

Smoke billowed from somewhere in the debris pile Saturday afternoon as earth movers tried to shift the rebar and concrete.

Several residents said there had been warnings or just rumors of an impending strike, though they characterized it as chatter among residents. Miriam al-Shami, 44, who lived with her family in a small house next to the building that was hit, said the warnings were worrying enough that her husband had sent her and several of their children away the night before the strike, to another part of Beirut, where one of her sons had rented a room.

The husband, Emad, stayed, along with one of their sons, Mohamad, 21.

“I left,” she said. “But many people returned.”

She video-called her husband Friday night, worried because the Israelis were hitting Beirut’s southern suburbs. “He said don’t worry, it’s far from us.” The son told her they were “fine.”

After the strike shook the city, she called again, frantically, and received no answer from Emad. Mohamad picked up his phone, and said he was trapped under the rubble. “Send someone to get me out,” he pleaded. It took rescuers two hours, but Mohamad survived, Shami said, bereft and stumbling near the wreckage of her home.

When rescuers arrived, Emad still had a pulse, but he later died at the hospital. His mother was also killed.

The blast tore walls off an adjoining building, killing Haroun Suleiman, a 25-year old man from Gezira state in Sudan, while he slept, according to Hassan Ishaq, one of several Sudanese men who lived in the apartment.

Abdullah Salman, 60, sat in an alleyway Saturday afternoon, near a Toyota demolished by debris apparently flung from the blast. He lived on the airport road, and had gone to sleep after hearing the booms, thinking they occurred in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a frequent target of the Israeli raids. When he woke again early Saturday, he rushed to Basta and the vaporized building where his son Mohammad lived.

His son was traveling at the time of the strike, in Nigeria. But Mohammad’s wife and daughter were in the building, in the same first floor apartment as Nancy Awad, along with the wife’s sisters and parents. He had not yet told his son about the strike.

“They were all civilians,” he said. “They should not give Hezbollah as an excuse.”

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Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut contributed.