Israel has intensified its attacks on Lebanon this week, hitting areas outside of Hezbollah’s control on Tuesday.

Strikes without warning hit a vehicle north of Beirut and the Jnah neighbourhood in the heart of the capital.

Attacks also continued in the city’s southern suburbs and the country’s south, both where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

A building was destroyed on the road to Beirut’s airport after an evacuation order, and in the south, a strike hit a health facility, killing a paramedic, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Israel’s military said it had hit Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut and killed a senior commander and another senior figure from the Iran-backed armed group.

Hezbollah joined the ongoing regional war on 2 March, sending missiles towards Israel, after the US and Israel attacked the armed group’s ally Iran on 28 February.

Israeli attacks have kept bombarding Lebanon as its troops have moved into the country’s south.

On Tuesday, a vehicle was targeted in the Mansourieh area, a predominantly Christian residential neighbourhood north of Beirut.

Meanwhile, the Jnah neighbourhood in the heart of the capital was attacked after midnight. The Lebanese health ministry said the Al-Zahraa Hospital had received and treated “a number of those injured in the air strike”.

Hassan Jalwan, who lives near Jnah, said he heard several “big explosions” overnight.

“Nobody knows what’s happening,” he said, adding that “displaced people have been sleeping in the open” in the area.

The Dahieh neighbourhood to the south of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, continues to be a target. A building was destroyed on Tuesday in Ghobeiry on the road to the airport following an evacuation order.

Also on Tuesday, Lebanon’s health ministry said at least seven people had been killed by Israeli strikes in the country’s south, including the paramedic.

The number of health workers who have been killed since the start of the war has now reached 53.

Earlier, the Lebanese army cleared its last positions in the south, pulling out from Ain Ibel and Rmeish villages a day after an army checkpoint was hit and a soldier was killed by an Israeli air strike, according to the Lebanese Armed Forces. The Israeli military has not appeared to have commented yet on the reported death.

However, some residents of the villages refuse to leave.

In the predominantly Christian village of Rmeish, Father Najib Al Amil appeared in a video on social media, where he said: “There is grass and soil. We rely on God and will stay in our village. We either all die together and lose our land or live and our villages will live with us.”

Israel has announced its decision to control large swathes of land in southern Lebanon – up to the Litani River, about 30km from the border with Israel to create a buffer security zone.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would keep security control over the territory even after the end of the current war against Hezbollah. The plan has drawn criticism from the UN.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave the south, but there are still tens of thousands who have refused to go.

Supply lines to the south have been cut by Israel targeting bridges and infrastructure, making villages in the south uninhabitable.

Katz said more than 600,000 displaced Lebanese residents would be “completely prohibited” from returning to that area until the safety of residents of northern Israel was guaranteed.

The Israeli defence minister also said all houses in villages near the border in Lebanon will be destroyed “according to the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza”.

In total, 1,268 people in Lebanon have been killed since the beginning of the attacks, the country’s health ministry said on Tuesday.

More than one million people have been displaced, the UN reported.

This is a critical time for Lebanon and the residents of the south. Many see Israel’s strategy in the south mimicking that of Gaza destruction, depopulation and occupation.

The government said earlier that this constitutes a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

South Lebanon previously lived under Israeli occupation for nearly 18 years, between 1982 and 2000.

Some Lebanese have lived through the displacement and loss of land generation after generation.

Many in Lebanon believe that Israel is more powerful than Hezbollah and capable of destroying the south with its advanced missiles and drones. At the same time, if Israel is to stay in the south, Hezbollah is more powerful on the ground and can engage in a guerrilla war to wear out the Israelis and prevent them from staying put.

In short, for the hundreds of thousands who have been forced out of their homes, this war is not ending anytime soon.

Armed assailants killed 73 people at a gold mine in South Sudan, government officials said on Monday, in violence linked to a dispute over gold extraction.

The attacks occurred on Saturday near Jebel Iraq in Central Equatoria state in the south of the country, Vice President James Wani Igga said.

At least 25 others were injured and some fled the scene.

Authorities warned that the death toll could rise as the search for missing people continues.

It remained unclear which group was responsible for the attack.

The vice president said an official investigation would be launched and security measures at mining sites and commercial centres would be strengthened.

Charles Madut, the governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal state in the country’s north-west, condemned the attack, describing the violence against innocent civilians as unacceptable and said that the perpetrators must be brought to justice. 

A Russian tanker carrying oil to Cuba has entered the waters off the Communist-run Island, Russia’s Interfax.

The oil shipment – the first to reach Cuba since January – comes hours after US President Donald Trump said that he had no problem with countries, including Russia, sending supplies to the island.

Trump’s remark appeared to signal a loosening of a de facto oil blockade his administration had imposed on Cuba since January.

Cuba has been experiencing a series of nation-wide blackouts as the blockade exacerbated existing shortages.

According to Interfax, the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin is carrying a “humanitarian shipment” of 100,000 tonnes of crude oil.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) had warned that severe fuel shortages meant that Cuban hospitals were struggling to maintain emergency and intensive care services.

Cuba’s situation has deteriorated rapidly since 3 January, when US forces seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro – a staunch ally of the Cuban government – who had been providing the island with oil under highly preferential terms.

Trump also threatened to impose tariffs on any nation sending oil to Cuba.

Russian Minister of Energy Sergei Tsivilev said on Wednesday that Cuba “had found itself in a difficult situation as a result of sanctions pressure”.

“That is why we are currently sending humanitarian supplies to Cuba,” he added.

Just over a week ago, the US Treasury department added Cuba to a list of countries barred from receiving oil deliveries from Russia.

But in an apparent reversal of his strategy, Trump told journalists on board of Air Force One on Sunday that he had “no problem” with Russia delivering oil to Cuba.

“We have a tanker out there. We don’t mind having somebody get a boatload because they need (…) they have to survive,” he said.

It was not clear from Trump’s comment if this represented a reversal of the fuel blockade policy or just a temporary softening.

The Russian tanker is expected to offload the oil in Matanzas terminal in the coming hours.

The oil it carries is expected to provide Cuba with a short-term lifeline.

Its Communist government, led by President Miguel Díaz Canel, has been in talks with the Trump administration to find a route out of the crisis.

But both sides have publicly set out a number of political and economic red lines which make it hard to see where they could find common ground.

President Trump recently said he could “take” Cuba while the island’s leadership has said it refuses to accept any enforced changes to the personnel or political direction of its government.

Cuba was already facing its worst economic and energy crisis since the end of the Cold War, because of a combination of a fall in tourism after the coronavirus pandemic and government economic mismanagement.

This crisis has been further worsened by the de facto fuel blockade.