The strike followed Israel bombing Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday as part of an attack it said was in response to missiles fired by the Iran-aligned militants over the weekend.
The Yemen strikes killed at least four people and wounded 29, the Houthi-run Health Ministry said in a statement, and residents said the bombing had caused power outages in most parts of the port city of Hodeidah.
The attacks came after Israel struck more targets in Lebanon following its assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and a string of the militant group’s top commanders.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 105 people were killed around the country in airstrikes on Sunday. Two strikes near the southern city of Sidon, about 45km south of Beirut, killed at least 32 people, the ministry said. Separately, Israeli strikes in the northern province of Baalbek Hermel killed 21 people and wounded at least 47.
Lebanese media reported dozens of strikes in the central, eastern and western Bekaa and in the south, besides strikes on Beirut. Israel says it targets militants, but the strikes have hit buildings where civilians were living and the death toll was expected to rise.
In a video of a strike in Sidon, verified by the AP, a building swayed before collapsing as neighbors filmed. One TV station called on viewers to pray for a family caught under the rubble, posting their pictures, as rescuers failed to reach them. The Lebanese Health Ministry reported at least 14 medics were killed over two days in the south.
US President Joe Biden said he would speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in coming days as he declared an all-out war in the Middle East must be avoided.
“I’ll tell you what I say to him when I talk to him,” he told reporters in Washington. Asked whether all-out war in the Middle East could be avoided, he replied: “It has to be. We really have to avoid it.”
The bomb that Israel used to kill Nasrallah was an American-made guided weapon, a US Senator Mark Kelly, chair of the Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee, said. He said Israel used a 2000-pound (900-kg) Mark 84 series bomb. His statement during an interview with NBC marks the first US indication of what weapon was used.
Israel’s military said in a statement that dozens of aircraft had attacked Yemeni power plants, as well as ports in Hodeidah and Ras Issa.
It was the second such Israeli attack on Yemen in just over two months. In July, Israeli warplanes struck Houthi targets near Hodeidah after a Yemeni drone hit Tel Aviv.
Yemen’s Houthi militants, backed by Iran, have – like Hezbollah in Lebanon – repeatedly fired missiles and drones at Israel in solidarity with Palestinians following a Hamas cross-border attack on October 7.
In their latest attack, the Houthis claimed to have launched a ballistic missile towards Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Saturday. Israel said it had intercepted that missile, along with one launched on Friday.
Iran condemned the Israeli strikes on Yemen, saying they had targeted civilian infrastructure. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel should not be allowed to attack countries in the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance” one after the other.
Nasrallah’s body was recovered from the site of Friday’s strike, a medical source and a security source told Reuters. Hezbollah has not said when his funeral will be held. The London Telegraph reported his body was found intact, his death caused by blunt trauma, according to Lebanese authorities.
Nasrallah made Hezbollah into a powerful domestic force in Lebanon and helped turn it into the linchpin of Iran’s network of allied groups in the Arab world.
Some Lebanese mourned him on Sunday.
“We lost the leader who gave us all the strength and faith that we, this small country that we love, could turn it into a paradise,” said Lebanese Christian woman Sophia Blanche Rouillard, carrying a black flag to work in Beirut.
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Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the funeral would be marked by a national holiday, with three days of official mourning starting on Monday despite growing fears of an Israeli ground invasion.
Israel’s intensifying bombardments have increased fears that the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon could spin out of control, potentially drawing Iran into the war, as well as the US, Israel’s closest ally.
The fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, their latest round of warfare in four decades of on-off conflict, has been waged in parallel with Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Hezbollah has consistently fired rockets into Israel in support of Hamas since October 7.
Israel says its goal is to make its northern areas safe from Hezbollah rocket fire and to allow thousands of displaced residents to return, but its strikes have also had a devastating impact on civilians in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said more than 1000 Lebanese had been killed and another 6000 wounded in the past two weeks. It did not say what percentage were civilians or combatants. The government said a million people – a fifth of the population – had fled their homes.
In Beirut, some displaced families spent the weekend on the benches at Zaitunay Bay, home to a string of restaurants and cafes on Beirut’s waterfront. Many of them had little other than duffle bags of clothes and rolled-out mats to sleep on.
“You won’t be able to destroy us, whatever you do, however much you bomb, however much you displace people – we will stay here. We won’t leave. This is our country and we’re staying,” said Francoise Azori, a Beirut resident who was jogging through the area.
On Sunday, Israel’s military said the air force had struck dozens of targets, including launchers and weapons stores, while its navy said it had intercepted eight projectiles coming from the direction of Lebanon and one from the Red Sea.
More blasts rocked Beirut and drones could be heard flying over the Lebanese capital overnight on Saturday and throughout Sunday.
Israeli airstrikes have killed a string of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders. On Sunday, Israel said it had killed Nabil Kaouk, a prominent Hezbollah leader, whose death Hezbollah confirmed.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was moved to a secure location in Iran on Saturday after Nasrallah’s killing.
Hezbollah’s arsenal has long been a point of contention in Lebanon, a country with a history of civil conflict. Hezbollah’s Lebanese critics say the group has unilaterally pulled the country into conflicts and undermined the state.
However, Lebanon’s top Christian cleric, Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, said Nasrallah’s killing had “opened a wound in the heart of the Lebanese”.
Rai has previously voiced criticism of the Shiite Islamist Hezbollah, accusing it of dragging Lebanon into regional conflicts.