By Laila Bassam and Ari Rabinovitch
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military pounded Beirut's southern suburbs with airstrikes on Tuesday, mounting one of its heaviest daytime attacks yet on the Hezbollah-controlled area, and struck the middle of the country where more than 20 people were killed.
Smoke billowed over Beirut as around a dozen strikes hit the southern suburbs starting in midmorning. After posting warnings to civilians on social media, the Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets in Beirut's Dahiyeh area and later said it dismantled most of the group's weapons and missile facilities.
Israel said it had taken steps to reduce harm to civilians and repeated its standing accusation that Hezbollah deliberately embeds itself into civilian areas to use residents as human shields, a charge Hezbollah rejects.
In northern Israel, two people were killed in the city of Nahariya when a residential building was struck, Israeli police said. Hezbollah later claimed responsibility for a drone attack that it said was aimed at a military base east of Nahariya.
Israelis were forced to take shelter from drone attacks across the north, the military said. One hit the yard of a kindergarten in a Haifa suburb, where the children had been rushed into a shelter, rescue workers said. None were hurt.
In Mount Lebanon province in the middle of Lebanon, Israeli strikes killed eight people in the village of Baalchmay southeast of Beirut and 15 people in Joun village in the Chouf district, Lebanon's health ministry said.
In the south, five people were killed in an Israeli strike on Tefahta, two in a raid on Nabatieh and one in the coastal city of Tyre. Another person was killed in a strike in Hermel in the northeast, the ministry said.
Beirut residents have largely fled the southern suburbs since Israel began bombing there in September. Footage of one strike shared on social media showed two missiles slamming into a building of around 10 stories, demolishing it and sending up clouds of debris.
Ignited by the Gaza war, the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah had been rumbling on for nearly a year before Israel went on the offensive in September, pounding Lebanon with airstrikes and sending troops into the south.
Israel has dealt Hezbollah heavy blows, killing many of its leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, flattening large areas of the southern suburbs, destroying border villages in the south and striking more widely across Lebanon.
Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi, visiting troops in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, said Israeli forces were "operating very strongly" in the country.
Since hostilities erupted a year ago, Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,287 people in Lebanon, the majority in the last seven weeks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Its figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Hezbollah attacks have killed about 100 civilians and soldiers in northern Israel, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon over the last year, according to Israel. Hezbollah late on Tuesday said its forces had killed more than 100 Israeli soldiers since Oct. 1.
In a statement, Hezbollah said that since that date it had forced an Israeli retreat from several towns in southern Lebanon, without naming them, and promised more strikes against Israeli military targets. Israel's military said that Hezbollah fired 55 projectiles into Israel on Tuesday.
WAR GOALS
The United States has sought to broker a ceasefire in Lebanon, and the outgoing administration of Democratic President Joe Biden hasn't given up hope of reaching a deal in its final months.
White House envoy Amos Hochstein told reporters that he thinks "there is a shot" at a truce in Lebanon soon, Axios reported on Tuesday, a contrast to peace efforts in Gaza where Qatar has suspended its mediation.
Similarly, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday there had been "a certain progress" in ceasefire talks for Lebanon.
But Israel's new Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday there would be no ceasefire in Lebanon until Israel achieves its goals there, including disarming Hezbollah and returning evacuated Israelis to their homes in northern Israel.
Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday chose former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a staunchly pro-Israel conservative, to be ambassador to Israel.
Potentially signaling that the U.S. under Trump will reduce pressure on Israel to restrain its warfare, Huckabee has opposed calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and Saar on Tuesday praised his nomination.
The Lebanese government, which includes Hezbollah, has repeatedly called for a ceasefire based on the full implementation of a U.N. Resolution that ended a war between the group and Israel in 2006.