VIDEO: Israel pounds Lebanon with heaviest airstrikes of the war

Israel carried out its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since the conflict with Hizbollah broke out last month, even as the Iran-aligned group paused attacks on ‌northern Israel and Israeli troops in Lebanon under a two-week US-Iran ceasefire.

Consecutive explosions shook Beirut, sending smoke billowing across the capital, as Israel's military said it had launched the largest ​coordinated strike of the ⁠war. More than 100 Hizbollah command centres and military sites were targeted in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, it said.

The strikes ‌killed dozens and wounded hundreds, according to Lebanon's health ministry. ‌In Beirut, Reuters reporters saw people on motorcycles picking up wounded and transporting them to hospitals because there were not enough ambulances to get them in time.

A group of firefighters worked to put out flames in a car park after one strike left more than a dozen cars scorched and mangled. The head of Lebanon's syndicate of doctors, Elias Chlela, called in a written statement for "all physicians from ‌all specialities" to head to any hospital they could to offer help. One of Beirut's biggest hospitals said it was in need of donations of all blood types.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ⁠said overnight that the ceasefire suspending the six-week-old U.S.-Israeli war against Iran did not apply to Lebanon, and the Israeli military said operations against Hezbollah there would continue. That position contradicted comments by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key intermediary in the US-Iran ceasefire talks, who had said the truce would include Lebanon. Lebanon's state news agency NNA had reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon earlier in the day, including artillery shelling and a dawn airstrike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. An Israeli strike on the southern city of Sidon killed eight people and wounded 22 others, Lebanon's health ministry said.

Hizbollah stopped attacking Israeli targets early on Wednesday, three Lebanese sources close to the group told Reuters. The group's last public statement on ​its military activity was posted at 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Tuesday), saying it had targeted Israeli troops inside Lebanon on Tuesday evening.

The group is likely to issue a ‌statement outlining its formal position on the ceasefire and on Netanyahu's assertion that Lebanon is not included, the three Lebanese sources said. French President Emmanuel Macron said the situation in Lebanon, a former French protectorate, remained critical and called for Lebanon to be included in the deal. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, welcoming the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, said Beirut would continue its efforts to ensure that Lebanon was included ⁠in any lasting regional peace agreement.

"Hezbollah was informed that it is part of the ceasefire - so we abided by it, but Israel as usual has violated it and committed massacres all across Lebanon," senior Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel's air and ground campaign across Lebanon, including more than 130 children and more than 100 women, since March 2 when Hizbollah started firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Tehran. Israel ‌has issued evacuation orders covering ‌around 15% of Lebanese territory since then, mostly in the south and in suburbs south of ⁠Beirut. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel has also pledged to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River as ‌part of a "security zone" it says is intended to protect its northern residents.

"Hopefully a ceasefire will be reached," said Ahmed Harm, a 54-year-old man displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs. "Lebanon can't take it anymore. The country is collapsing economically, and everything is collapsing."

Outside a school sheltering displaced people in Sidon, pillows and blankets were ⁠piled onto cars as some families held out hope of returning home soon. On an astroturf football field, one family had packed plastic bags with clothes, pots and pans, towels, sheets ​and blankets.

"We're just waiting for the official decision from the top, so we can go back," said Samar al-Saibany, who was displaced from a village in the south.

Local mayor Mustafa al-Zein said more than 28,000 people were sheltering in the area as of Tuesday night. He cautioned residents against trying to return before an ⁠official signal.

Reuters