Israel began a third day of strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, hours after Hezbollah confirmed the death of a senior commander in an airstrike on Beirut and a Lebanese minister said only Washington could help end the fighting.
Lebanese media reported that Israeli airstrikes had targeted several areas in the country’s south, beginning at around 5am, causing unspecified casualties.
Earlier on Wednesday Hezbollah confirmed that senior commander Ibrahim Qubaisi was among six people killed by an Israeli airstrike on an apartment block in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, as Israel had claimed earlier. Israel said Qubaisi headed the group’s missile and rocket force.
Israel’s offensive since Monday morning has killed 569 people, including 50 children, and wounded 1,835 in Lebanon, health minister Firass Abiad told Al Jazeera Mubasher TV. Tuesday’s attacks came after Monday’s barrages racked up the highest death toll in any single day in Lebanon since the 15-year civil war that started in 1975.
Israel’s new offensive against Hezbollah has stoked fears that nearly a year of conflict between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza is escalating and could destabilise the Middle East. Britain urged its nationals to leave Lebanon and said it was moving 700 troops to Cyprus to help its citizens evacuate.
The UN security council said it would meet on Wednesday to discuss the conflict.
“Lebanon is at the brink. The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world – cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza,” UN secretary general António Guterres said.
At the UN, which is holding its general assembly this week, US President Joe Biden made a plea for calm. “Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even if a situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” he said.
Lebanon’s foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib criticised Biden’s address as “not strong, not promising” and said the US was the only country “that can really make a difference in the Middle East and with regard to Lebanon.” Washington is Israel’s longtime ally and biggest arms supplier.
The US “is the key … to our salvation,” he told an event in New York City hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Up to half a million people are estimated to have been displaced in Lebanon, said Bou Habib. He said Lebanon’s prime minister hoped to meet with US officials over the next two days.
In Lebanon, displaced families slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. With hotels quickly booked to capacity or rooms priced beyond the means of many families, those who did not find shelter slept in their cars, in parks or along the seaside.
Fatima Chehab, who came with her three daughters from the area of Nabatieh, said her family had been displaced twice in quick succession.
“We first fled to stay with my brother in a nearby area, and then they bombed three places next to his house,” she said.
Some people waited for hours in gridlocked traffic to get to what they hoped would be safety.
Issa Baydoun fled the village of Shihine in southern Lebanon when it was bombed and came to Beirut in a convoy of cars with his extended family. They slept in the vehicles on the side of the road after discovering that the shelters were full.
He rejected Israel’s contention that it hit only military targets.
“We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them,” Baytown said. “That’s why we left our homes, to protect our children.”
The UN’s high commissioner for refugees in Lebanon said one of its staffers and her young son were among those killed Monday in the Bekaa region, while a cleaner under contract was killed in a strike in the south.
Early on Wednesday, an Israeli strike hit the seaside town of Jiyyeh, 75km (46 miles) north of the border with Israel, two security sources said.
The US and fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt have so far been unsuccessful in their efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in the nearly year-old war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, a Hezbollah ally. Hezbollah has said it will cease firing rockets at Israel if it agrees a ceasefire in Gaza.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose country and Israel are arch-enemies, told the UN general assembly the international community must “secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and bring an end to the desperate barbarism of Israel in Lebanon, before it engulfs the region and the world.”
Israel’s military said its air force conducted “extensive strikes” on Tuesday on Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and dozens of launchers that were aimed at Israeli territory.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the attacks had weakened Hezbollah and would continue. Hezbollah “has suffered a sequence of blows to its command and control, its fighters, and the means to fight. These are all severe blows,” he told Israeli troops.
He accused the UN of shirking its responsibility to prevent Hezbollah’s attacks into Israel.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to maintain the offensive against Hezbollah and said the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was leading Lebanon “to the edge of the abyss”.
Hezbollah said it launched rockets at the Dado military base in northern Israel and attacked the Atlit naval base south of Haifa with drones, among other targets. An Israeli military spokesperson said six soldiers and civilians had been injured, most not seriously.
Suspected Israeli missiles were also launched at the Syrian port city of Tartous and were intercepted by Syrian air defences, Syrian army sources said. The Israeli military declined to comment on the report.
Since the Gaza war started in October, Israel has intensified a years-long air campaign targeting Iran-aligned armed groups and their weapons transfers in Syria.
Funerals were held on Tuesday for people killed in Lebanon by Israel’s bombardment. In the coastal city of Saksakiyeh, Mohammed Helal was defiant as he mourned his daughter Jouri.
“We are not afraid. Even if they kill, dissect and destroy us,” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report