JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired heavy rocket barrages at Israel on Sunday, and the Israeli military said houses had been destroyed or set alight near Tel Aviv, after a powerful Israeli airstrike killed at least 29 people in Beirut the day before.
Israel also struck Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, where intensified bombardment over the last two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in U.S.-led ceasefire talks.
Hezbollah, which has previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it had launched precision missiles at two military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby.
Police said there were multiple impact sites in the area of Petah Tikvah, on the eastern side of Tel Aviv, and that several people had minor injuries.
The Israeli military (IDF) said a direct hit on a neighbourhood had left “houses in flames and ruins”. Television footage showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire.
The IDF said Hezbollah had fired 240 rockets at Israel, of which many were intercepted, with sirens sounding across most of the country. At least four people had been injured by shrapnel.
Video obtained by Reuters showed a projectile exploding as it smashed into the roof of a building in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.
The military warned on social media that it planned to target Hezbollah facilities in southern Beirut before strikes that demolished two apartment blocks, according to security sources in Lebanon. Afterwards, the IDF said it had hit command centres “deliberately embedded between civilian buildings”.
On Saturday, it had carried out one of its deadliest and most powerful strikes on the centre of Beirut.
Lebanon’s health ministry on Sunday raised the death toll from 20 to 29. It said 84 people had been killed in all on Saturday, taking the death toll to 3,754 since October 2023.
The IDF did not comment on Saturday’s strike in the capital or say what it had attacked.
Israel went on the offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in September, pounding the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs with airstrikes after nearly a year of hostilities ignited by the Gaza war.
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The Israeli offensive has uprooted more than 1 million people in Lebanon.
Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein highlighted progress in negotiations during a visit to Beirut last week, before travelling to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, and then returning to Washington.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said a U.S. ceasefire proposal was awaiting final approval from Israel.
“We must pressure the Israeli government and maintain the pressure on Hezbollah to accept the U.S. proposal for a ceasefire,” he said in Beirut after meeting Lebanese officials.
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had convened a meeting of his security cabinet for 5 p.m. (1500 GMT).
Diplomacy has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. It requires Hezbollah to pull its fighters back around 30 km (19 miles) from the Israeli border, and the Lebanese army to deploy in the buffer zone.
The Lebanese army said on Sunday at least one soldier had been killed and 18 more injured in an Israeli strike that caused severe damage at an army centre in Al-Amiriya near the southern city of Tyre.
The Israeli military said it regretted and was investigating the incident, and that it was fighting against Hezbollah, not the Lebanese Army.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said the attack “represents a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire, strengthen the army’s presence in the south, and implement … 1701”.
Borrell said the EU was ready to allocate 200 million euros ($208 million) to support the Lebanese army.
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