Israel’s military struck the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Tuesday, July 30, saying it was targeting the Hezbollah commander.
Hezbollah has been blamed for a soccer field rocket attack that killed 12 Israeli children and teens in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The strike hit Haret Hreik in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Both White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre and State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to comment in briefings immediately after the strike. Both said a wider war is not inevitable and urged continuation of efforts to reach a diplomatic solution.
“Israel has every right to defend itself, certainly for the things like malign, Iran-backed proxies like Hezbollah,” Mr. Patel said at a press briefing. “It certainly faces threats like no other country does in that region of the world.
“We of course want to make sure that through our diplomacy conditions can be created in which civilians can return home.”
Israel and Hezbollah have conducted an accelerated battle of rockets and air strikes across the border since the soccer field strike on July 27.
It was not immediately clear if any Hezbollah official was hit.
The airstrike damaged several buildings, collapsing half of an apartment building next to a hospital. The hospital sustained minor damage.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the strike, carried out with a drone that launched three rockets, killed one woman and wounded several other people, some of them seriously. The wounded were taken to nearby hospitals. Bahman Hospital near the site of the blast called on people to donate blood.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry said Lebanon will file an urgent complaint with the U.N. Security Council over what it called Israel’s violation of its sovereignty by disrupting its navigation systems.
It said Israel was affecting the safety of civil aviation in the airspace of Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport.
“Lebanon also holds Israel internationally responsible for the consequences of any accident or disaster caused by Israel’s deliberate policy of jamming air and ground navigation systems, and deliberately disrupting signal receiving and transmitting devices,” the foreign ministry’s statement said.
The Biden administration has sought to contain Israel’s expected retaliation to avoid escalating to a wider war and specifically requested it not to strike Beirut or the Hezbollah strongholds outside it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from a visit to the United States on Sunday and received authorization from his cabinet to decide on the manner and timing of retaliation. At a memorial for the victims of the soccer field attack, he promised a “severe” response.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Hezbollah’s strike an escalation and the worst attack on Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border massacre from Gaza.
Hezbollah, the Iran-supported terrorist group controlling southern Lebanon, has attacked northern Israel in support of Hamas since Oct. 8, with Israel retaliating with its own cross-border strikes.
