Lebanon’s leader calls on U.N. for cease-fire amid search for airstrike survivors

BEIRUT – Rescuers dug through piles of rubble in central Beirut on Friday, looking for survivors and bodies, a day after deadly airstrikes in two densely populated neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital spread fear that no place in the country was safe from the Israeli military onslaught against Hezbollah.

Lebanese officials said the Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 100, the deadliest attack in Beirut in more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group. The Israeli military has not commented on the strikes.

The area hit is home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and many residents there feared the strikes would intensify sectarian tensions in Beirut. Since the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated last month, most Israeli airstrikes near Beirut had targeted predominantly Shiite neighborhoods in the city’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway.

Nazik Rashid, 50, who owns a salon across from one of the buildings hit in the Basta neighborhood in central Beirut, said she was shocked that the predominantly Sunni area, close to several Western embassies and the Lebanese parliament, had been struck.

“It’s supposed to be a safe refuge here,” she added, as she surveyed the damage to her salon, which had a shattered front window and door. “Why would they hit us?”

The conflict raged as Israeli Jews prepared Friday to observe one of the holiest days of the year, Yom Kippur, for the first time since the Oct. 7 attacks.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired about 180 projectiles into Israel from Lebanon by Friday afternoon. The Lebanese military, which is distinct from Hezbollah and is not a party to the conflict, said two soldiers had been killed and three others wounded when the Israeli military targeted an army base in Kafra, in southern Lebanon. And two more United Nations peacekeepers were injured in explosions at their headquarters in southern Lebanon, the U.N. force said, a day after two others were wounded by Israeli tank fire.

The search for survivors in Beirut came as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, implored the U.N. to adopt a resolution calling for an “immediate” cease-fire, the latest attempt by his embattled and weakened government to end the violence that has killed thousands and displaced nearly 1 million in Lebanon.

“The diplomatic solution remains on the table,” Mikati said in a televised address that urged Hezbollah and Israel to return to the provisions of a 2006 U.N. agreement on demilitarizing the border between Israel and Lebanon.

U.S. officials also say they believe that reviving the resolution, which was adopted at the end of the last major war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, may be the only way out of Israel’s escalating offensive.

The resolution called for Israeli forces to withdraw from Lebanon and stipulated that only U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army could operate in the country’s south, effectively banning Hezbollah from conducting military operations in the area.

Mikati said Friday that Lebanon wanted to see “the deployment of the army in the south and the bolstering of its presence along the border.” He added that “Hezbollah is in agreement on this issue,” although it was not clear that the group was ready to withdraw from southern Lebanon and end its rocket, missile and drone attacks on Israel.

The head of Hezbollah’s media office, Mohammad Afif, speaking to reporters in Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday, said the group might be open to cease-fire efforts.

“Our absolute priority now is to defeat the enemy and force them to stop the aggression,” he said. “However, any internal or external political effort to achieve a cessation is appreciated as long as it is consistent with our comprehensive vision of the battle, its circumstances and its results.”

He made no mention of moving the group’s forces back from the south, and said that its military capabilities remained strong. “The battle with the Zionist enemy is still in its earliest stages,” he added.

Israeli officials have given no indication that they are prepared to agree to a cease-fire in Lebanon as long as Hezbollah remains a threat to northern Israel, where more than 60,000 people have been displaced by the group’s rocket fire.

In a video posted online Friday, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the country’s forces “will not stop until we ensure that we can safely return the residents not just now, but with a future outlook.”

In Beirut, residents were still absorbing the shock and horror of Thursday’s airstrikes, with many fearing the death toll could rise. Samira Ali Sbheiteh, 71, said the attack hit an apartment building where her cousin Fatima, her cousin’s husband, Abbas Khalsa, and their two young children had been living. “We still have no news about them,” she said.

Men and women gathered late Friday morning in the street across from some of the buildings. Shards of glass crunched under their feet, as bits of torn window curtains and small pieces of concrete fell from the damaged apartments above.

Many in the area had fled towns and villages in southern Lebanon after Israel intensified its bombardment there two weeks ago. Some had made their way to the Hezbollah-dominated cluster of neighborhoods just south of Beirut and then evacuated again to relatives’ homes in the neighborhood when that area was subjected to near-daily strikes.

Many said they never imagined that central Beirut, too, would become a target.

“We’re going to become homeless eventually,” said Sawson Moussa, 50, who lives near an apartment building that had been hit, as she choked back tears. She recalled a horrifying scene after the strike: Thick black smoke filled the air along her street. People coated in dust and blood walked, dazed, as others screamed for help.

In southern Lebanon, the Lebanese military said that Israeli forces had targeted a Lebanese army base in the town of Kafra, killing two soldiers and injuring three others. The Israeli military said in a statement it was reviewing the episode and was “unaware” that any Lebanese army site was in the area it was striking. It emphasized that it was fighting Hezbollah “and not the state of Lebanon.”

There have been increasing casualties among the Lebanese army’s ranks in recent weeks as a result of Israeli attacks, prompting the military to return fire on at least one occasion.

Israel says Hezbollah has entrenched itself in southern Lebanon, amassing a vast stockpile of weapons and missiles near the border with Israel. The group is considered much more powerful than the Lebanese military, which is overseen by Lebanon’s government.

Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after its ally Hamas led the deadly attack on southern Israel that started the war in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military dropped leaflets over the northern town of Jabalia in Gaza over the weekend to warn people to evacuate to the south because of a coming offensive against Hamas, but many residents of northern Gaza are staying put. About 400,000 people remain in Gaza’s north, according to the United Nations, and many do not have the means to flee or are fearful of being permanently displaced

On Friday, as Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, drew near in Israel, businesses closed and radio and television broadcasts stopped. Sirens sounded into the night in northern Israel, warning residents to seek shelter. Some projectiles were intercepted and others fell in open area, sparking fires.

For many in Israel, Yom Kippur also recalls another attack, in 1973, when forces from Egypt and Syria caught Israel off-guard, setting off a 19-day war that traumatized the nation.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.