death toll increases and nearly 1 in 5 people displaced

Nearly one in five people in Lebanon have been displaced as a result of Israel’s Gaza-style scorched earth tactics, and more people have died in the capital after another attack.

Israel continued to bomb Lebanon on 18 March while the New Arab reported that 12 people have been killed in Beirut.

Its reporters wrote:

Lebanon said two Israeli strikes on central Beirut early Wednesday killed at least six people, with local media also reporting raids on Iran-backed Hezbollah’s stronghold in the city’s southern suburbs.

Local media reported one strike hit an apartment in the central Zuqaq al-Blat neighbourhood, where the Israeli military last week hit a Beirut branch of the Hezbollah-linked financial firm Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

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The densely populated area is close to the government’s headquarters and several embassies.

Figures reported from Lebanon’s Disaster Risk Management Unit say 1,049,328 people have registered as displaced while 132,742 people are being housed in official shelters.

Separately, the Lebanese Ministry of Health stated the overall death toll since 2 March has reached 886, with 2,141 injured.

Lebanon attacked by Israel more than 15,000 times

In theory, Hezbollah breached a US-brokered ‘ceasefire’ with Israel which had held up since their last war in 2024. In practice, the US gave Israel carte blanche to strike Lebanon, which it has done constantly since the deal was struck. During that period Israel attacked southern Lebanon about 15,400 times.

You can read about the secretive Israel-US ‘side letter’ pact here and our extensive coverage of Israel’s ceasefire breaches and the new invasion so far here.

International campaign group, No Cold War, made the comparison between Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its new attack on Lebanon.

Israel told reporters it had fired on a UN position, injuring two Ghanaian peacekeepers. Al Jazeera reported:

Israel’s army acknowledged its troops were behind the incident on March 6 in which shells were fired on UNIFIL personnel at the al-Qawzah base, and said it had apologised to Ghana and the United Nations.

It said the Israeli forces had been responding to antitank missile fire from Hezbollah, which had moderately wounded two of their soldiers, and mistakenly fired at UNIFIL troops instead.

The channel also quoted the IDF:

The IDF [Israeli army] regrets the incident and has conveyed its apologies through the appropriate channels to Ghana and the United Nations. The findings of the investigations have been disseminated within the IDF to prevent recurrence of similar incidents.

Adding:

UNIFIL, which told Reuters its investigation into the incident was not yet complete, has called the incident “unacceptable”.

UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, released a statement on the war this week. She attacked Hezbollah while mildly criticising Israeli “operations”.

Civilians, densely populated areas and UN peacekeepers, are all grist to the mill of Israel’s colonial aggression. And — as in Gaza and Iran — the IDF has no problem with hitting civilians and key infrastructure along the way.

As the war intensifies, despite warnings from humanitarian organisations, displacement is likely to accelerate.

Featured image via the Canary