Israel launches new strikes on Lebanon as leaders draw closer to ceasefire with Hezbollah (2024)

BEIRUT — Israel's military launched airstrikes across Lebanon on Monday, unleashing explosions throughout the country and killing at least 31 while Israeli leaders appeared to be closing in on a negotiated ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group.

Israeli strikes hit commercial and residential buildings in Beirut as well as in the port city of Tyre. Military officials claimed they targeted areas known as Hezbollah strongholds. They issued evacuation orders for Beirut's southern suburbs, and strikes landed across the city, including meters from a Lebanese police base and the city's largest public park.

The barrage came as officials indicated they were nearing agreement on a ceasefire, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Security Cabinet prepared to discuss an offer on the table.

Foreign ministers from the world’s leading industrialized nations also expressed cautious optimism Monday about possible progress on a ceasefire.

“Knock on wood,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said as he opened the Group of Seven meeting outside Rome.

“We are perhaps close to a ceasefire in Lebanon," he said. "Let's hope it's true and that there's no backing down at the last-minute.”

A ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon was foremost on the agenda of the G7 meeting in Fiuggi, outside Rome, that gathered ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, in the last G7 encounter of the Biden administration.

For the first time, the G7 ministers were joined by their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as the Secretary General of the Arab League.

Meanwhile, massive explosions lit up Lebanon's skies with flashes of orange, sending towering plumes of smoke into the air as Israeli airstrikes pounded Beirut's southern suburbs Monday. The blasts damaged buildings and left shattered glass and debris scattered across nearby streets.

Some of the strikes landed close to central Beirut and near Christian neighborhoods and other targets where Israel issued evacuation warnings, including in Tyre and Nabatiyeh province. Israeli airstrikes also hit the northeast Baalbek-Hermel region without warning.

Lebanon's Health Ministry said Monday that 26 people were killed in southern Lebanon, four in the eastern Baalbek-Hermel province and one in Choueifat, a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs that was not subjected to evacuation warnings on Monday.

The deaths brought the total toll to 3,768 killed in Lebanon throughout 13 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah and nearly two months since Israel launched its ground invasion. Many of those killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah have been civilians, and health officials said some of the recovered bodies were so severely damaged that DNA testing would be required to confirm their identities.

Israel claims to have killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members. Lebanon's Health Ministry says the war has displaced 1.2 million people.

Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon in early October, meeting heavy resistance in a narrow strip of land along the border. The military previously exchanged attacks across the border with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group that began firing rockets into Israel the day after the war in Gaza began last year.

Lebanese politicians have decried the ongoing airstrikes and said they are impeding ceasefire negotiations. The country's deputy parliament speaker accused Israel of ramping up its bombardment to pressure Lebanon to make concessions in indirect ceasefire negotiations with Hezbollah.

Elias Bousaab, an ally of the militant group, said Monday that the pressure has increased because "we are close to the hour that is decisive regarding reaching a ceasefire."

Israeli officials voiced similar optimism Monday about prospects for a ceasefire.

Mike Herzog, the country's ambassador to Washington, earlier in the day told Israeli Army Radio that several points had yet to be finalized. Though any deal would require agreement from the government, Herzog said Israel and Hezbollah were "close to a deal."

"It can happen within days," he said.

Israeli officials have said the sides are close to an agreement that would include withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and a pullback of Hezbollah fighters from the Israeli border. But several sticking points remain.

After previous hopes for a ceasefire were dashed, U.S. officials cautioned that negotiations were not yet complete and noted that there could be last-minute hitches that either delay or destroy an agreement.

"Nothing is done until everything is done," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday.

The proposal under discussion to end the fighting calls for an initial two-month ceasefire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah would end its armed presence along the southern border south of the Litani River.

The withdrawals would be accompanied by an influx of thousands more Lebanese army troops, who have been largely sidelined in the war, to patrol the border area along with an existing U.N. peacekeeping force.

Western diplomats and Israeli officials said Israel demands the right to strike in Lebanon if it believes Hezbollah is violating the terms. The Lebanese government says such an arrangement would authorize violations of the country's sovereignty.