At least one Israeli strike hit Beirut&s southern suburbs early on Wednesday morning, Reuters witnesses said, hours after the U.S.
said it opposed the scope of Israeli attacks in Beirut amid a rising death toll and fears of wider regional escalation.Reuters witnesses heard two blasts and saw plumes of smoke emerging from two separate neighborhoods.
It came after Israel issued an evacuation order early on Wednesday which mentioned only one building.The Israeli military has in recent weeks carried out strikes on Beirut&s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, without advance warnings, or issued a warning for one area while striking more broadly.The Israeli military said it conducted a strike on an underground Hezbollah weapons stockpile in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh.&Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warnings to the population in the area,& the Israeli military said.Israeli military evacuation orders were also affecting more than a quarter of Lebanon, according to the U.N.
refugee agency, two weeks after Israel began incursions into the south of the country that it says are aimed at driving back Hezbollah.Some Western countries have been pushing for a ceasefire between the two neighbors, as well as in Gaza, though the United States says it continues to support Israel and was sending an anti-missile system and troops.On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the U.S.
had expressed its concerns to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&s administration on the recent strikes.&When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it&s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to,& he told reporters, adopting a harsher tone than Washington has taken so far.The last time Beirut was hit was on Oct.
10, when two strikes near the city center killed 22 people and brought down entire buildings in a densely populated neighborhood. The post Israeli strike rocks Beirut after US says it opposes scope of air assault first appeared on Ariana News.