• 28 hurt in seafront attack targeting civilians, displaced families; death toll in Lebanon near 700
• Hezbollah retaliates with ‘biggest barrage’, fires 200 rockets

BEIRUT: A brutal Israeli strike on a central Beirut seafront, where displaced families were also sheltering in tents, killed 12 people and wounded 28 on Thursday, Lebanon’s health ministry said, as Israel threatened to expand operations and seize territory.

The deadly strike hit Ramlet al-Bayda, a seaside area that had become a refuge for civilians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment of southern Lebanon.

An AFP correspondent witnessed a horrifying aftermath of damaged vehicles, blood staining the pavement and a small crater where the missile struck. The area, usually teeming with life, was sealed off by security forces.

Displaced people, who believed they had found a measure of safety by the sea, described scenes of terror.

“We saw dead people on the ground,” said Aseel Habbaj, who had been sheltering in a nearby tent after being forced from her home by earlier Israeli attacks.

The death toll from Israel’s sustained attacks on Lebanon since March 2 has climbed to at least 687, according to Lebanon’s information minister, Paul Marcos. He said the victims include “98 children and 52 women”.

In response to Israel’s ongoing aggression, the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah announced on Wednesday night a major new operation.

Hezbollah said early on Thursday it had fired missiles at an Israeli military intelligence base in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and another base south of Haifa, targeting core components of the Israeli war machine. The group confirmed its fighters fired a barrage of rockets, advanced missiles and drones at Israeli towns and military sites.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, reacted by ordering his troops to “prepare for expanding” attacks in Lebanon. He issued a brazen threat to Lebanon’s sovereignty in a statement.

“I warned the President of Lebanon that if the Lebanese government does not know how to control the territory and prevent Hezbollah from threatening northern communities and firing toward Israel — we will take the territory and do it ourselves,” Katz said.

This threat was followed by action, as the Israeli military on Thursday nearly doubled the area of southern Lebanon from which it ordered residents to flee, a policy critics have described as a campaign of forced displacement.

The new orders mean Israel has now ordered residents out of their homes in a tenth of Lebanese territory, according to a Reuters calculation. Residents of south Lebanon were instructed to move north of the Zahrani river, about 40 kilometres from the border.

The Israeli military acknowledged its widespread bombardment, stating on Thursday it had launched “a wide-scale wave of strikes” across Lebanon.

Other Israeli strikes on Aramoun, a residential area south of the capital, also killed three people and wounded a child, according to the health ministry.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, described Hezbollah’s retaliatory operation as its “biggest barrage” since the conflict began, claiming it included approximately 200 rockets and 20 drones.

However, in an Arab village near Majd el-Kroum in northern Israel, a home belonging to Khalil Khalil’s family of nine was struck by a projectile that blew a hole through their living room.

A local civil defence official told AFP the damage appeared to have been caused by a stray air defence missile fired by the Israeli military itself.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2026*