Israel hits Beirut suburb after US delivers truce proposal

BEIRUT: An Israeli airstrike flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions on Friday in Lebanon, shaking the Lebanese capital as Israel kept up its intensified bombardment of Hezbollah-controlled areas of the city.

One of several airstrikes on Friday morning, the attack struck near the Tayouneh junction in an area where the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit.

Israel has this week stepped up airstrikes against the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs in Lebanon’s capital- an escalation that has coincided with in U.S.-led diplomatic contacts towards ending the conflict.

The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon on Thursday submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who is endorsed by Hezbollah to negotiate, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters without providing details.

The draft was Washington’s first written proposal to halt fighting between its ally Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in at least several weeks, the sources said.

“It is a draft to get observations from the Lebanese side,” one of the sources told Reuters. When asked about the proposal, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Beirut said: “Efforts to reach a diplomatic deal are ongoing.”

A senior diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, assessed that more time was needed to get a ceasefire done and was hopeful it could be achieved.

The diplomacy marks a last-ditch attempt by the outgoing U.S. administration to secure a Lebanon ceasefire, as efforts to end the war in Gaza appear totally adrift.

Senior Iranian official Ali Larijani, an advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, met Berri and Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Beirut on Friday, Lebanese and Iranian media reported.

Ahead of the latest airstrikes, the Israeli military issued a warning on social media identifying buildings in the southern suburbs and telling residents to evacuate, saying they were near Hezbollah facilities.