A blast in the Cola neighborhood was the first known Israeli strike in the central part of the city since a war with Hezbollah in 2006.
Hours after a blast hit an apartment building in Cola, a neighborhood in western Beirut, Lebanese soldiers had cordoned off the area. Chunks of cinder blocks thrown from the building were scattered around.
“It was terrifying,” said Mohieddine Darwish, 52, who lives on the eighth floor of an adjacent apartment building. “It’s Beirut, not Dahiya,” Mr. Darwish added, referring to a dense urban area near Beirut where the militant group Hezbollah holds sway, one that Israel has repeatedly hit with airstrikes over the past week.
Cola is a largely Sunni Muslim neighborhood within the city limits. Lebanon’s health ministry said the blast had killed four people and injured four others.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group based in Lebanon and Gaza, said that three of its members had been killed. On Monday afternoon, the Israeli military claimed responsibility for the blast, saying it had “struck and eliminated” the head of the militant group’s Lebanon branch and an associate. It was the first known Israeli strike in central Beirut since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006.
Mr. Darwish said he had been asleep with his wife when he woke up to the sound of an explosion and the crash of concrete hitting the sidewalk.
He immediately grabbed a bag of clothes and blankets he had packed days earlier, and he and his wife ran downstairs to their car. They set off for their second home in Lebanon’s northern mountains. The city, they deemed, was no longer safe.
Nearby, Ahmad Qanso, 60, gazed over at the destruction, leaning on his wooden cane. He said he was sleeping under a nearby bridge — one of many Lebanese who have spent nights in the open air in Beirut since Israeli bombardment escalated in recent days — when he woke up to what sounded like an explosion. “I was shocked,” he said.
Mr. Qanso and two of his neighbors arrived in Beirut on Saturday after fleeing their village of Chehabyeh, in southern Lebanon, which has been hit by Israeli airstrikes. “When we first arrived, we thought it was safe here,” he said. “But now, there’s no safety anywhere. There’s not even shelter.”
Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region. More about Christina Goldbaum
