The Israeli military on Sunday afternoon struck a residential neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in an area that is a stronghold of the militant group Hezbollah.
In a joint statement following the strike, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military had targeted infrastructure in the Dahiya, where Hezbollah holds sway. Israel said the Iranian-backed group was storing precision missiles there.
“Israel will not allow Hezbollah to grow stronger and pose any threat to it — anywhere in Lebanon,” Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Katz said. “The Dahiya district in Beirut will not serve as a sanctuary city for the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”
They said that “the Lebanese government bears direct responsibility for preventing these threats.”
Hezbollah did not immediately comment.
Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, said on Lebanese state media that Israel was undermining stability and warned that its actions would “escalate tensions and pose real threats to the region’s security.” He called on France and the United States, which are helping oversee a cease-fire that largely ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in November, to “assume their responsibilities and compel Israel to immediately cease its attacks.”
Mr. Aoun said, “The ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are unacceptable under any pretext.”
Videos on social media and on regional news media showed a large cloud of smoke billowing upward from the area after the strikes. Al-Manar, a Lebanese news site affiliated with Hezbollah, said that the attack caused “significant damage” to the surrounding area.
The Israeli military said that its air force had struck a weapons storage site and that “storage of missiles in this infrastructure site constitutes a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” The military said it took steps “to mitigate the risk of harming uninvolved civilians,” including issuing a warning to civilians and using “precise munitions.”
Lebanon’s Civil Defense said on social media that it was extinguishing fires set off by the Israeli strike. The group said that ambulances and fire teams had been standing by “and were able to extinguish the fires at a record speed without recording any injuries.”
Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had also struck in southern Lebanon and killed a Hezbollah operative who “advanced Hezbollah’s attempts to re-establish itself” in the area.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the top United Nations official in Lebanon, criticized the attack near the capital on Sunday. “Today’s strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut generated panic and fear of renewed violence among those desperate for a return to normalcy,” she said on social media, urging “all sides to halt any actions that could further undermine” the cease-fire.
While the Israeli military has continued to strike in southern Lebanon with some frequency since the cease-fire went into effect, attacks near Beirut had stopped until about a month ago. In late March, Israel struck near the capital after a rocket was fired at Israel, prompting fears that the cease-fire could unravel.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel from Lebanon shortly after Hamas, its ally, led a bloody attack from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off the war in Gaza. After nearly a year of low-level violence between Israel and Hezbollah, that conflict, too, escalated into full-scale war, including an Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon.
This month Morgan Ortagus, President Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy, visited Lebanon to discuss the cease-fire and Lebanon’s rebuilding needs. The total damage and economic loss from the war are estimated to be $14 billion, and Lebanon needs $11 billion to rebuild, the World Bank said last month, making the conflict the country’s most destructive since its long civil war ended in 1990.
The Lebanese government has pledged to bring all weapons in the country under its control, including those belonging to the militants, but it is not clear when — and how — it might do that. Hezbollah was severely weakened in the conflict but still has significant influence in Lebanon. The militant group has said it remains committed to the cease-fire with Israel.
Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.
Ephrat Livni is a reporter for The Times’s DealBook newsletter, based in Washington.
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