By James Mackenzie and Timour Azhari
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -A series of powerful explosions shook Beirut on Friday and thick clouds of smoke rose over the city, Reuters witnesses said, in what Lebanese media said were a series of Israeli airstrikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of the city.
Israel’s foreign minister on Thursday rejected global calls for a ceasefire with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and continued airstrikes that have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and heightened fears of a regional war.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said four buildings had been destroyed in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.
Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the death toll in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the early hours of Friday was 25. One attack killed nine members of a family, including four children, in the border town of Shebaa, mayor Mohammad Saab told Reuters.
More than 700 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli attacks since Monday, according to a tally of official tolls.
“The shops behind us were hit,” said 13-year-old Syrian Abdallah Tawfik Al-Hamid, lying in a hospital bed in southern Lebanon following an airstrike. “The young boy who was with me was martyred (killed), and I’m still alive.”
Hezbollah said it had fired rockets into Israel on Friday at Kiryat Ata near the city of Haifa some 30 km (20 miles) from the border, and at the city of Tiberias, declaring the attacks a response to Israeli strikes on villages, cities and civilians.
Though Israeli air defences have shot down many of Hezbollah’s rockets, limiting damage, the attacks have displaced tens of thousands and shut down normal life across much of northern Israel as more areas fall into its crosshairs.
Israel’s military said it had intercepted four unmanned aircraft that crossed from Lebanese territory into the maritime space off the coast of Rosh Hanikra at the Lebanese border.
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut; Jana Choukeir and Nadine Awadalla in Dubai; writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Ros Russell, Timothy Heritage and Sharon Singleton)
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