BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP)—An Israeli strike on central Beirut’s seafront killed eight people on Thursday, Lebanon’s health ministry said, as Israel threatened to expand operations and seize territory if Hezbollah does not stop its attacks.

After Hezbollah announced a new operation against Israel on Wednesday night, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the following day he ordered troops to “prepare for expanding” attacks in Lebanon.

“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.

Both Israel and Iran said Hezbollah on Wednesday launched a simultaneous attack with the Iranian military, while Hezbollah declared it was staging a new operation.

The Israeli military said the attack saw Hezbollah launch “approximately 200 rockets, approximately 20 UAVs (drones)” in the biggest barrage from the group since the start of the war.

Israel’s strike on Ramlet al-Bayda on Beirut’s seaside killed eight people and wounded 31, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

An AFP correspondent at the scene saw a damaged motorcycle and two damaged cars, with the area, usually bustling with crowds, now sealed off by security forces.

Blood stains were on the pavement, with a small hole in the ground.

– ‘We won’t leave’ –

“We saw dead people on the ground,” said Aseel Habbaj, a displaced woman who had been sheltering in a nearby tent after fleeing Israeli bombings in other areas of Lebanon.

“We were all asleep in my tent, when suddenly we heard a noise,” Habbaj told AFP. “We jumped up and went to see what was happening,” before a second strike wounded her husband.

Her 40-year-old neighbour Dalal al-Sayed said she had opted to pitch her tent at the seaside after fleeing attacks in southern Lebanon “because the last thing we expected was Israel to hit Beirut”.

Her family could not afford to rent apartments, she said.

“We won’t leave, we will stay here even if we die,” she added.

The seaside attack was the third in the heart of the capital since the Middle East war began.

Displaced people have been sleeping rough or in tents on the streets of Beirut, including in Ramlet al-Bayda, where some shelters were hit by shrapnel from Thursday’s strike, according to the AFP correspondent.

Israel has also repeatedly hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, where the Israeli military said on Thursday it had struck 10 Hezbollah targets.

Strikes on Aramoun, a residential area south of Beirut, also killed three people and wounded a child, according to the health ministry.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported several Israeli strikes on the south of the country, where Hezbollah has long held sway.

– Hezbollah operation –

Hezbollah said early Thursday it had fired missiles at an Israeli military intelligence base in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and another military base south of Haifa.

It also said its fighters fired rockets, advanced missiles and drones at towns, military bases and other locations.

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes.

Israel, which kept up its strikes in Lebanon even before the war despite a 2024 ceasefire, has since launched air raids and sent ground troops into border areas.

The violence has killed more than 687 people, according to Lebanese authorities, while more than 800,000 people have registered as displaced.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said earlier that they had carried out a joint missile operation with ally Hezbollah against targets in Israel.

In turn, the Israeli military said Thursday that it had launched “a wide-scale wave of strikes” targeting Hezbollah infrastructure across Lebanon.

It also said it hit “dozens of launchers” as well as Hezbollah intelligence and command sites in south Beirut.