Israeli Strike on Building in Central Beirut Kills 11

An Israeli airstrike on a multistory building in central Beirut killed at least 11 people on Saturday, according to the Lebanese health ministry, part of an intensifying Israeli military campaign that appears aimed at pressuring Hezbollah into a cease-fire deal.

Over the past week, Israeli ground troops made a concerted push deeper into southern Lebanon while Israel stepped up its bombardment of the Dahiya, a cluster of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut that are effectively governed by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The death toll from the pre-dawn strike in central Beirut was expected to rise and at least 63 people were injured, according to the Health Ministry. The attack came just after 4 a.m., jolting Beirut residents awake with thundering explosions that left much of the city enveloped in acrid smoke.

It was the third strike this week in central Beirut, an area that had largely been spared since the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the airstrike hit a residential building that was believed to house at least 35 people in the Basta neighborhood of Beirut, an area that is home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslims and close to several Western embassies. Iran-backed Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim group and Shiite communities in southern and eastern Lebanon have borne the brunt of Israeli attacks over the past few months.

“There was no prior warning,” Mr. Abiad said of the Basta strike in a phone interview. “It appears there are still bodies under the rubble.”

Later on Saturday morning, Israel issued new evacuation warnings for the Dahiya.

The new wave of attacks on Lebanon came as Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be inching toward a cease-fire deal.

An Israeli official said Friday that there was “cautious optimism” about prospects for a truce in negotiations mediated by the United States, though Lebanese officials were less sanguine about a deal. Both Israel and Hezbollah have said they will keep fighting as negotiations go on.

A Lebanese official briefed on the talks was less sanguine, saying Lebanon believed it was “realistic” that the negotiations could fail. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Heavy fighting was reported overnight in the southern Lebanese town of Khiam which the Israeli military has been attempting to encircle in recent days, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. Hezbollah said on Friday that it had repeatedly attacked Israeli forces in and around the large town, which lies around three miles from the Israeli border.

Israel began an intensified military campaign against Hezbollah in September in response to almost a year of near-daily rocket attacks on northern Israel. Hezbollah said the attacks were in solidarity with its ally, Hamas, in Gaza. Both armed groups are back by Iran.

Israel said it was going to war in Lebanon to stop the rockets and to allow tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their homes in northern towns that were evacuated last year. But the rocket attacks have not ceased, and those residents have been unable to return home.

The war has killed more than 3,500 people and forced almost a quarter of the population to flee their homes. It has become the bloodiest conflict inside Lebanon since the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.

Euan Ward contributed reporting.