Israeli airstrikes rock southern suburbs of Beirut and cut off a key crossing into Syria

BEIRUT -

Israel carried out another series of punishing airstrikes Friday, hitting suburban Beirut and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing the Israeli bombardment of the Hezbollah militant group.

The overnight blasts in Beirut's southern suburbs sent huge plumes of smoke and flames into the night sky and shook buildings kilometres away in the Lebanese capital. Additional strikes sent people running for cover in streets littered with rubble in the Dahiyeh neighbourhood, where at least one building was levelled and cars were burned out.

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The Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah's central intelligence headquarters around midnight. It did not say who it was aiming for or if any militants were killed in that strike, but it claimed to have killed 100 Hezbollah fighters in the last 24 hours.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported more than 10 consecutive airstrikes in the area. Some 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries' shared border.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, the Israel military said.

The Israeli military also said that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah's communications division. The military said in a statement that Skafi was "a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000" and was "closely affiliated" with high-up Hezbollah officials.

Thursday's strike along the Lebanon-Syria border, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Beirut, led to the closure of the road near the busy Masnaa Border Crossing -- the first time it has been cut off since Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire almost a year ago.

Israel said it targeted the crossing because it was being used by Hezbollah to transport military equipment across the border. It said fighter jets had struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into Lebanon.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weaponry through Syria from Iran, its main backer.

Associated Press video footage showed two huge craters on each side of the road. People got out of cars, unable to pass, carrying bags of their possessions as they crossed on foot. More than 250,000 Syrians and 82,000 Lebanese have fled across the border into Syria during the escalation of the past two weeks. There are a half-dozen crossings between the two countries, and most remain open.

Israel launched its ground escalation in Lebanon on Tuesday, and its forces have been clashing with Hezbollah militants in a narrow strip along the border. Israel has vowed to put an end to Hezbollah fire into northern Israel, after nearly a year of exchanges between the two sides that drove tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border. Israeli strikes over the past two weeks killed some of Hezbollah's key members, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.

On Thursday, Israel warned people to evacuate communities in southern Lebanon, including areas beyond the buffer zone declared by the United Nations after Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006.

Israeli Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters Friday that the ground operations were limited, aimed at rooting out Hezbollah militants and making the border safe for northern residents of Israel to return to their homes,

"First of all, our mission is to make sure they're (Hezbollah) not there," Shoshani said. "Afterwards we will talk about how we make sure they don't come back."

Nine Israeli troops have been killed in close fighting in the area, which is saturated with arms and explosives, the military said.

Two more soldiers were killed and two were severely wounded by a drone attack in northern Israel, military officials said.

An umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it carried out three drone strikes Friday in northern Israel. In recent months, the group has regularly claimed drone strikes launched at Israel, but the strikes have rarely landed.

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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was in Beirut on Friday to meet Lebanese officials, warned that if Israel carries out an attack on Iran, Tehran would retaliate more powerfully than it did this week when it launched at least 180 missiles into Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Hezbollah.

The missile barrage amid a series of rapidly escalating attacks has threatened to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.

"If the Israeli entity takes any step or measure against us, our retaliation will be stronger than the previous one," Araghchi said after meeting Lebanon's parliament speaker, Nabih Berri.

In the Iranian capital, Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers and delivered a speech in which he praised the country's missile strikes on Israel and said Iran was prepared to conduct more strikes if needed.

He spoke to thousands of people at Tehran's main prayer site, the Mosalla mosque, which was decorated with a huge Palestinian flag.

Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day after Hamas's attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which the militants killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Since then, Israel's campaign in Gaza in retaliation has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, just over half them women and children, according to local health officials.

Meanwhile, Israel carried out its deadliest strike in the occupied West Bank since the Gaza war began, hitting a cafe in the Tulkarem refugee camp. At least 18 Palestinians were killed, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Relatives said a family of four, including two children, were among the dead. The Israeli military said several Hamas militants were killed, including the group's leader in the camp.

The Israeli military said Friday that militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time Israel has seen rocket fire from the territory in a month.

The military said one of the rockets was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile-defence system and the other fell in an open area near a kibbutz across the border from Gaza.