Rescuers dug through piles of rubble in central Beirut on Friday, looking for survivors and bodies, a day after deadly airstrikes in two densely populated neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital spread fear that no place in the country was safe from the Israeli military onslaught against Hezbollah.
Lebanese officials said the Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 100, the deadliest attack in Beirut in more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group. The Israeli military has not commented on the strikes.
The area hit is home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and many residents there feared the strikes would intensify sectarian tensions in Beirut. Since the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated last month, most Israeli airstrikes near Beirut had targeted predominately Shiite neighborhoods in the city’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway.
Nazik Rashid, 50, who owns a salon across from one of the buildings hit in the Basta neighborhood in central Beirut, said she was shocked that the predominantly Sunni area, close to several Western embassies and the Lebanese Parliament, had been struck.
“It’s supposed to be a safe refuge here,” she added, as she surveyed the damage to her salon, which had a shattered front window and door. “Why would they hit us?”
The conflict raged as Israeli Jews prepared on Friday to observe one of the holiest days of the year, Yom Kippur, for the first time since the Oct. 7 attacks.