Lebanon says Israel strikes Hizbollah bastion in south Beirut

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese state media reported on Wednesday a third wave of Israeli raids on Hizbollah's south Beirut bastion in 24 hours, while the health ministry said another strike south of the capital killed eight people.

"Enemy aircraft targeted Beirut's southern suburbs", the official National News Agency (NNA) said, reporting six strikes.

AFPTV footage showed plumes of black smoke rising over the area following the strikes, about an hour after Israel's army issued evacuation warnings.

People hastily drove away from the area following the evacuation calls, with residents firing gunshots in the air to warn civilians to flee, an AFP photographer said.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli strike on hit Aramoun, a densely-packed area south of Beirut which is located outside Hizbollah's traditional strongholds.

The health ministry said that eight people had been killed in the strike.

"Body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified," it added, after the NNA said the strike targeted a residential apartment at dawn.

An AFP photographer saw rescuers pulling bodies out of the rubble in Aramoun, where the four-storey building had partially collapsed.

The latest strikes came on the day that Israel's new defence minister told senior military commanders there would be no easing-up in the war against Hizbollah as he toured the northern border with Lebanon.

"We will make no ceasefires, we will not take our foot off the pedal, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of our war objectives," Israel Katz said on his first visit to the border region since his appointment last week.

"We will continue to strike Hizbollah everywhere," Katz added.

He said that Israel would not "allow any [ceasefire] arrangement that does not include achieving the objectives of the war", including "disarming Hizbollah, pushing them beyond the Litani River", which flows across southern Lebanon, "and creating conditions for the safe return" of residents of northern Israeli towns and villages to their homes.

Following Katz's comments, the Israeli army said air raid sirens were activated across central and northern Israel, adding that it had intercepted some of the "five projectiles" that had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

Hizbollah and Lebanese authorities say that more than 3,360 people have been killed since October last year when Hizbollah and Israel began engaging in cross-border clashes in the wake of the deadly attacks by its Gaza-based ally Hamas.