Flames and smoke rise from buildings hit by Israeli air strikes on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, October 23, 2024. /CFP
Israeli strikes pounded Beirut's southern suburbs on Wednesday and Hezbollah said it fired precision guided missiles for the first time at Israeli targets, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the region, pushing for a halt to fighting in both Gaza and Lebanon.
The strikes on the edges of Beirut sent thick columns of flames shooting up into the night sky one after the other, shortly after an Israeli military spokesman issued evacuation warnings for the neighborhood.
Hezbollah said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had escalated its attacks on Israel, using "precision missiles" for the first time and launched new types of drones on Israeli targets, without offering further details.
It later said it had targeted an Israeli military factory on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The intensifying exchanges of fire come as Blinken visited the region again for peace between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas.
Blinken, who has traveled to the Middle East regularly since the Israel-Hamas conflict began, is making his first trip since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, whose death Washington hopes can provide an impetus for peace.
But the conflict appeared to be spreading, with new strikes around midday on Wednesday on Tyre, a UNESCO-listed port city in south Lebanon, which also came after Israeli evacuation orders.
Tens of thousands of people have already fled Tyre as Israel steps up its campaign to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
In Gaza, where Israel has intensified an assault on the northern edge of the territory since killing the leader of Hamas last week, health authorities and residents reported 42 people killed in fresh Israeli strikes, most in the north.
People crowd while queuing for bread outside a bakery in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2024. /CFP
The U.S. aims to head off a widening of the conflict in anticipation of Israeli retaliation for an Iranian October 1 missile attack. Blinken said Israel's retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.
Arriving in Lebanon for talks on ending hostilities, Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said providing arms to Israel posed a dilemma: "On the one hand, Israel is attacked every day and not supporting it would mean that people are not (being) protected. On the other, it is also Germany's responsibility to stand up for international humanitarian law."
Blinken said it was now time for Israel to turn its military victories into "an enduring strategic success," to bring home hostages and to end the conflict with a clear postwar plan.
In the year since the Israel-Hamas conflict began, Israel has laid Gaza to waste to root out Hamas, killing nearly 43,000 Palestinians. The past month's strikes on Lebanon have displaced at least 1.2 million Lebanese.
Hospitals have ceased functioning and had run out of coffins. A UN-backed polio vaccination campaign, launched after a Gaza baby was paralyzed by the disease, was halted.
The Israel-Hamas conflict has devastated the Palestinian economy and left nearly all of Gaza's population in poverty, with life indicators like health and education regressing by 70 years, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said on social media platform X, citing a latest UN study.
"The longer this goes on, the longer it takes to bring back hundreds of thousands of girls and boys to a learning environment, the more extreme the challenges will be to undo these huge losses," he added.
(With input from agencies)