Israeli strike near Beirut hospital kills 4, including child, and wounds 24, Lebanese officials say

A child and three adults were killed and 24 others were wounded on Monday in an Israeli strike near Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the main public hospital in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, the national Health Ministry said in a statement.

It was unclear what the exact target of the strike was and there were few details available as of Monday evening.

An Israel Defence Forces spokesperson said in a statement to CBC News that it “struck a Hezbollah terrorist target” near the hospital, emphasizing that it did not target the hospital itself, and saying the hospital and its operation were not affected.

Earlier Monday, prior to the attack, Israel said it planned to carry out more strikes in Lebanon against Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a Hezbollah-run financial institution that it targeted the night before and which it says uses customers’ deposits to finance attacks against Israel.

Another hospital, Al-Sahel Hospital in southern Beirut, was being evacuated in anticipation of such strikes after Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said that Israeli intelligence had discovered a bunker belonging to late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah now being used as a finance vault under the hospital and that it held millions of dollars of gold and cash. Hagari did not provide media with any specific evidence of the existence of the vault.

The director of the hospital, Fadi Alameh, a member of Lebanon’s parliament, told Reuters that the allegations Israel was making were false and slanderous, and he called on the Lebanese Army to visit and show it only had operating rooms, patients and a morgue.

At least 15 branches of Al-Qard Al-Hassan hit

At least 15 branches of Al-Qard Al-Hassan were hit late Sunday in the southern neighbourhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. One strike flattened a nine-storey building in Beirut with a branch inside it.

The Arabic language spokesman for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, said Hezbollah stores hundreds of millions of dollars in the branches of Al-Qard Al-Hassan and that the money is used to purchase arms and pay fighters. He did not provide evidence to back up the claims.

The strikes were aimed at preventing the group from rearming, Adraee said.

The institution, which has more than 30 branches across Lebanon, tried to reassure customers, saying it had evacuated all branches and relocated gold and other deposits to safe areas.

Many customers are civilians unaffiliated with Hezbollah. Al-Qard Al-Hassan, which is sanctioned by the United States and Saudi Arabia, has long served as an alternative to Lebanon’s banks, which have imposed restrictions since a severe financial crisis that began in 2019.

Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, alleged Iran funds Hezbollah by sending cash and gold to the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.

Hagari said Israeli strikes in Beirut in early October and in Syria on Monday had also killed people responsible for transferring money between Iran and Hezbollah. Syrian state media said an Israeli airstrike Monday hit a car in the capital of Damascus, killing two people and wounding three.

Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in Lebanon on Monday before the Rafik Hariri strike, including four first responders, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

U.S. holding ceasefire talks

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Middle East on Monday to launch another push for an elusive ceasefire, seeking to revive negotiations to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and defuse the spillover conflict in Lebanon.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein held talks with Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday, meanwhile, on conditions for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Hochstein said that it was “not enough” for both sides to commit to UN Resolution 1701, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 and which calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.

He said neither Hezbollah nor Israel had adequately implemented the resolution, and that while it would be the basis for the end to current hostilities, the U.S. was seeking to determine what more needed to be done to make sure it was implemented “fairly, accurately and transparently.”

“We are working with the government of Lebanon, the state of Lebanon, as well as the government of Israel to get to a formula that brings an end to this conflict once and for all,” he said.

Israeli ground forces invaded Lebanon earlier this month. The military said it aims to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon so that Israelis living on the other side of the Lebanon-Israel border can return to their homes after more than a year of cross-border rocket and drone attacks.

Israeli airstrikes have pounded large areas of Lebanon for weeks, forcing 1.2 million people to flee their homes.

“Strike, strike, strike with planes and drones, and we don’t know who they are targeting and who will die each day,” said Micheline Jabbour, who works in a Beirut pastry shop.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Monday that the death toll since Israel’s offensive began had risen to 2,483, with 11,628 injured. Fifty-nine people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights over the same period, say Israeli authorities.