Strike kills 4 near Beirut hospital, as President Aoun pushes for talks with Israel

Sirens sound several times as Hezbollah steps up rocket fire on northern Israel, while IDF conducts airstrikes against terror group’s infrastructure in the Lebanese capital

A strike on south Beirut killed at least four people and wounded at least 39 on Sunday, near Lebanon’s largest public hospital, the Lebanese health ministry said.

The area lies adjacent to Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Another strike on southern Lebanon’s Kfar Hatta, near the coastal city of Sidon, killed seven people on Sunday, including a family of six, a source from the Lebanese civil defense told AFP.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said that among those killed was a 4-year-old girl and a soldier.

The Israeli military had called on the entire village to evacuate late on Saturday. There was no immediate comment on the deaths from the IDF.

Kfar Hatta has hosted many displaced people who fled from southern Lebanon.

The civil defense source said the family, lacking a car and already displaced from a town further south, was waiting for a relative to come pick them up. That man was also killed in the strike.

NNA also said a three-story building in Beirut’s Jnah neighborhood that was filled with residents sustained “severe damage” in an Israeli strike.

The strike came without warning, soon after an earlier one that came with advance notice, AP reported.

The Israel Defense Forces had announced earlier that it conducted a wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut.

The strikes come after the IDF reiterated its evacuation warning for the entire Dahiyeh area of south Beirut.

Rocket fire on northern Israel

Sirens sounded in the upper Galilee several times in quick succession as Hezbollah stepped up its fire on northern Israel after an overnight lull and relatively calm morning.

No injuries were reported in the recent attacks, which targeted the community of Meron and areas closer to the Lebanese border.

Rocket sirens also sounded in the northern city of Safed and surrounding communities, as well as in the Golan Heights city of Katzrin, the IDF says.

Hezbollah also claimed to have targeted an Israeli Navy vessel off the coast of Lebanon using a cruise missile Saturday night.

The terror group said that “a direct hit was confirmed” on the ship, 68 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast, “after hours of tracking the target.”

The IDF said it was unaware of the incident.

President Aoun pursues negotiations with Israel

In a televised Easter address on Sunday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun defended his decision to pursue negotiations with Israel.

Responding to journalists’ questions, Aoun said Israel has not yet responded to Lebanon’s demand for a ceasefire as a precondition for entering full negotiations. Still, he argued that talks are the only way to end Israel’s military campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group, warning that continued fighting could leave Lebanon in ruins.

“It may be that Israel wants to operate in southern Lebanon as it does in Gaza, but our duty is not to drag it into doing what it does in Gaza,” he said. “Negotiations are not surrender. Gaza is destroyed, and more than 70,000 have been killed, and only afterward do they negotiate. We have no choice but to negotiate to stop the tragedy in Lebanon.”

Aoun also aimed oblique criticism at Hezbollah for sowing internal discord and dragging Lebanon into the war, saying anyone who “harms civil peace is serving Israel, and that is worse than the Israeli attacks.”

On the matter of an Iranian envoy whom Lebanon has ordered to leave but who has refused to do so, the president said that “he is not an ambassador; he is at the Iranian embassy without an official role.”

UN peacekeepers under fire

Around 165 rockets fired by Hezbollah during the current round of fighting landed inside or next to United Nations posts in southern Lebanon, the IDF said.

On Friday, a Hezbollah rocket struck a UN Interim Force in Lebanon base in Odaisseh, wounding three members of the observer force, including two seriously, according to Israel. UNIFIL did not comment on the origin of the blast.

“Throughout the war, the Hezbollah terror organization has exploited its proximity to UNIFIL positions and posts to advance terrorist activities against the State of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement.

The IDF added that during the fighting, it continued to maintain coordination with UNIFIL forces in the area.

Last week, two UNIFIL troops of Indonesian origin were killed in an explosion in southern Lebanon, which Israel blamed on roadside bombs it said were placed by Hezbollah.

That came days after another Indonesian soldier was killed when a projectile exploded near one of the group’s positions. According to a UN security source, the peacekeeper was killed by Israeli fire.