Three projectiles struck the heart of Tel Aviv’s financial district on Tuesday morning, in what Israeli officials described as one of the most significant Hezbollah attacks since the collapse of the April ceasefire agreement. Two of the incoming rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome air defence batteries over the city centre. The third broke through the lid of the Azrael underground parking complex in the Azrael Tower complex, detonating with explosive force in the subterranean level.
Five people were killed in the Azrael blast and 32 were wounded, eight of them in critical condition, according to the Magen David Adom emergency service. A further two people died when a bus bomb detonated on Begin Boulevard in what investigators believe was a second, coordinated attack. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for both strikes within minutes of the strikes landing.
The Azrael Tower complex houses a mix of financial services firms, legal offices, and a shopping arcade that was busy at the time of the strike. Fire crews worked for more than two hours to contain a fire that spread from the parking levels to part of the ground floor. Structural engineers were called in to assess whether the tower’s foundations had been compromised.
Sirens blared across the Gush Dan metropolitan area — Tel Aviv’s densely populated central corridor — for approximately 25 minutes asIron Dome batteries engaged secondary incoming barrages near the city’s northern suburbs. Israel’s national airline EL AL grounded all flights in and out of Ben Gurion International Airport for six hours following the strikes, disrupting the travel plans of thousands. The airport resumed operations at 14:40 local time.
Ninety minutes after the Tel Aviv strikes landed, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed an air strike on Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, a known Hezbollah stronghold. The IDF said the target was a weapons storage facility. No casualties were reported from the Baalbek strike as of publication. The Lebanese Ministry of Health said hospitals in the Bekaa Valley were already at capacity following days of intensified cross-border exchanges.
In Gaza, hospitals were overwhelmed as mass casualty reports from adjacent IDF operations filtered in. The World Health Organisation issued a statement saying three of the territory’s largest medical facilities had received more than 200 wounded in a 24-hour window, calling the situation “catastrophic.”
The UN Security Council held an emergency session late Tuesday afternoon New York time. Secretary-General António Guterres urged all parties to return to ceasefire terms agreed in April, warning that the region was “one miscalculation away from a full-scale war.” Qatar and Oman opened emergency diplomatic channels with both Washington and Tehran in an attempt to de-escalate. The US State Department said it was “monitoring events closely” but declined to say whether the strikes had altered the $8 billion arms transfer package approved last week.
The USS Truman aircraft carrier and its strike group repositioned eastward from the Mediterranean into the Arabian Sea overnight, a move Defence analysts interpreted as a show of force signalling to Tehran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was placed on a “full war footing” state of readiness, according to a statement from IRGC headquarters in Tehran — language used before previous confrontations.
Tel Aviv’s financial markets halted trading for 35 minutes following the Azrael strike before recovering. The shekel stabilised against the dollar by midday.
Hezbollah’s media office issued a statement saying Tuesday’s attacks were “a reply to the Zionist enemy assassinations in the Bekaa and our continued right to defend Lebanon.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency security cabinet meeting that lasted four hours. No decision on a ground operation was announced by press time, though two cabinet ministers told Israeli media a ground incursion into southern Lebanon remained “on the table.”