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 said 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.
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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.
Airstrikes kill at least 31
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. No casualties were reported after many residents fled the targeted sites.
Some of the strikes landed close to central Beirut and near Christian neighborhoods and other targets where Israel had 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 says it has 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 had 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 U.S.-led ceasefire negotiations. The country's deputy parliament speaker accused Israel of ramping up its bombardment in order 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.”
Hopes grow for 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.
Two Israeli officials told The Associated Press that Netanyahu’s security Cabinet had scheduled a meeting for Tuesday, but they said it remained unclear whether the Cabinet would vote to approve the deal. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.
Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, told reporters Monday that he expected a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah to have stages and to be discussed by leaders Monday or Tuesday. Still, he warned, “it’s not going to happen overnight.”
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 is demanding the right to strike in Lebanon if it believes Hezbollah is violating the terms. The Lebanese government has said that such an arrangement would authorize violations of the country's sovereignty.
A ceasefire could mark a step toward ending the regionwide war that ballooned after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250.
The lack of a ceasefire has emerged as a political liability for Israeli leaders including Netanyahu, particularly while 60,000 Israelis remain away from their homes in the country's north after more than a year of cross-border violence.
Hezbollah rockets have reached as far south into Israel as Tel Aviv. At least 75 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians. More than 50 Israeli soldiers died fighting in the ground offensive in Lebanon. The Israeli military said about 250 projectiles were fired Sunday, with some intercepted.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the strongest of Iran’s armed proxies, is expected to significantly calm regional tensions that have led to fears of a direct, all-out war between Israel and Iran. It’s not clear how the ceasefire will affect the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Hezbollah had long insisted that it would not agree to a ceasefire until the war in Gaza ends, but it dropped that condition.
A top Hamas official in Lebanon said the Palestinian militant group would support a ceasefire between its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and Israel, despite Hezbollah’s previous promises to stop the fighting in Lebanon only if the war in Gaza ends.
“Any announcement of a ceasefire is welcome. Hezbollah has stood by our people and made significant sacrifices,” Osama Hamdan of Hamas' political wing told the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, which is seen as politically allied with Hezbollah.
While the ceasefire proposal is expected to be approved if Netanyahu brings it to a vote in his security Cabinet, one hard-line member, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said he would oppose it. He said on X that a deal with Lebanon would be a “big mistake” and a “missed historic opportunity to eradicate Hezbollah.”
If the ceasefire talks fail, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said, “it will mean more destruction and more and more animosity and more dehumanization and more hatred and more bitterness.”
Speaking at a G7 meeting in Fiuggi, Italy, the last summit of its kind before U.S. President Joe Biden leaves office, Safadi said such a failure "will doom the future of the region to more conflict and more killing and more destruction.”
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Federman reported from Jerusalem and Metz from Rabat, Morocco. Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Nicole Winfield in Fiuggi, Italy, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
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Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war