Deadly Israeli attack on residential area in Beirut leaves carnage

At least six people have been killed and 15 wounded in an Israeli air attack targeting Beirut’s southern suburb of Ghobeiri according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.

The initial toll from the attack on Tuesday is expected to rise as emergency services continue their work at the scene.

Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera correspondent Dorsa Jabbri said it was the third Israeli attack on that area of Beirut since Friday.

“There was an attack yesterday with Israel claiming to have targeted a high-ranking member of Hezbollah and that assassination was unsuccessful. And all this is happening as the country is in a state of high alert, with a huge crisis in terms of internally displaced people,” she said.

The Israeli military said it had “conducted a targeted strike in Beirut” on a senior Hezbollah commander on Tuesday. Hezbollah has not commented on whether he was killed.

An AFP photographer at the site of the attack said it had destroyed two floors of a building located in a densely packed residential area, and damaged dozens of nearby cars and motorbikes.

A crane was brought in to evacuate residents stranded in their apartments in nearby damaged buildings, the photographer said, with other cranes moving vehicles and removing rubble.

Hezbollah security cordoned off the site of the attack while rescuers looked for survivors amid the rubble of damaged buildings, water tanks and torn electric wires.

Hezbollah and its longtime foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted last October.

But on Monday, Israel launched devastating attacks across Lebanon’s south and east, killing more than 550 people according to the Health Ministry – the deadliest single-day toll since Hezbollah and Israel last went to war in 2006.

The attacks came after coordinated explosions of communication devices killed 39 people and wounded thousands on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.