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LAST UPDATE | 18 Mar
ISRAEL HAS REPEATEDLY struck central Beirut today, with Lebanese authorities reporting a death toll of at least 12, while people in the ancient port city of Tyre fled their homes in panic after Israeli warnings.
AFP journalists in the Lebanese capital said three densely populated neighbourhoods in the heart of Beirut were hit today.
In Bashoura, a whole building crumbled into a mountain of rubble after being struck.
A map shared by the Israeli military indicated the targeted building was going to be struck by the IDF, with a spokesperson urging people to evacuate.
Lebanese authorities yesterday said Israeli strikes have killed at least 912 people since 2 March, while more than a million people have registered as displaced.
Also early today, the Israeli military said it had “begun striking Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon” including in the Tyre area, where the NNA reported at least four strikes including on a house.
Meanwhile, Iran has vowed revenge as it prepared the funeral for its security chief Ali Larijani, firing off a wave of missiles against Israel while also reporting fresh Israeli-US strikes across the Islamic Republic.
Today, Israel killed another high-ranking Iranian official, the country’s intelligence minister Esmail Khatib.
Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian branded Khatib’s death a “cowardly assassination”
A barrage of Iranian missiles killed two people near Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv overnight, while Iranian media said seven people were killed in strikes in its western Lorestan province, a toll AFP could not verify.
Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written message that the killers of Larijani “will have to pay for it”.
“Without a doubt, the assassination of such a figure attests to his importance and to the hatred that the enemies of Islam harbour toward him,” Mojtaba Khamenei said, in a message published on his official Telegram channel on the day of Larijani’s funeral in Tehran.
“Every drop of spilled blood comes at a price, and the criminal murderers of these martyrs will soon have to pay it,” added Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public after taking office following the killing of his father, ex-supreme leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the war.
Larijani is the most prominent figure of the Islamic republic killed since Israel and the US launched their attacks on Iran on 28 February with a wave of strikes that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited a war across the Middle East.
According to Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, funerals for Larijani and another powerful figure killed by Israel, Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij paramilitary force, will take place from 10.30am Irish time in Tehran.
It was not certain the funerals would go ahead – the slain ayatollah’s funeral was due to be held days after he was killed, but that was later postponed indefinitely.
However, the Mehr news agency published a photo of Larijani’s coffin bearing his photo and draped with the Iranian flag, alongside that of his son, whose death was also announced.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards said today that they had launched missiles at central Israel as retaliation for Larijani’s death and warned of more to come.
The “pure blood of this great martyr… will be a source of honour, power and national awakening against the front of global arrogance,” it said.
An Iranian missile barrage killed two people near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, while authorities said falling munitions hit multiple sites in central Israel overnight.
Police said a cluster bomb hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, a city just outside Tel Aviv, and the roof collapsed on an elderly couple.
Iranian media, meanwhile reported strikes in Lorestan province and Hamedan city, both in the west of Iran, as well as Fars province in the south.
And in Lebanon, state media said Israel struck central Beirut early today without warning, with the health ministry reporting at least 12 dead and 41 wounded in the Basta and Zuqaq al-Blat neighbourhoods.
An Israeli strike also hit a car in the centre of Sidon, southern Lebanon’s largest city, killing two people including a civil defence rescuer, the health ministry said.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said the strike hit near the city’s civil defence headquarters and the seaside road, where many displaced people are sleeping in their cars.
According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli strikes have killed at least 912 people since 2 March, while more than one million people have registered as displaced, with more than 130,000 staying in official shelters.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan lashed out at Israel yesterday, condemning its “political assassinations” of Tehran’s leaders as “illegal activities outside the normal laws of war”.
Israel also said this week it had targeted Akram al-Ajouri, head of the military wing of the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in a strike in Iran, part of a strategy since the 7 October attacks by Hamas to kill the leaders of its enemies.
It has vowed to target Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since he succeeded his father.
“We will track him down, find him, and neutralise him,” military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin told reporters.
In contrast to Mojtaba Khamenei, Larijani, 68, had walked openly with crowds at a pro-government rally last week in Tehran.
He had “effectively been the figure in charge of the regime’s survival, its regional policy and its defence strategy,” David Khalfa, co-founder of the Atlantic Middle East Forum, told AFP.
In addition to its attacks on Israel and its neighbours, Iran has been hitting the global economy through attacks on energy infrastructure in the oil-rich Gulf.
Its attacks and threats against ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz have all but closed the key waterway, through which a fifth of global oil and LNG flows.
With oil still hovering around $100 a barrel, the US military said it brought out some of the heaviest bombs in its arsenal to penetrate sites near to the strait.
The US dropped several 5,000-pound bombs on “hardened Iranian missile sites” near the coast that posed a threat to international shipping, Central Command said.
US President Donald Trump yesterday fumed that American allies, which have largely distanced themselves from his war, were not lining up behind the United States to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
But he also insisted on his Truth Social platform: “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
Oil prices sank today after Iraq – a major oil producer and home to US-led coalition troops who have also been targeted by Iran – said it had resumed very limited oil exports through Turkey, avoiding the Strait of Hormuz.
However, analysts warned the positive mood could fade if the crisis drags on.
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