At the scene after Israel attacked central Beirut

Early Thursday morning, a missile tore through a building in central Beirut, far from Hezbollah’s strongest presence in the south.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was a “direct strike”.

Unlike many other strikes against Hezbollah in recent days in areas south of Beirut, the IDF did not issue an early evacuation order.

Five workers and two paramedics at a health center in the same building were killed, according to the Hezbollah-linked Civil Defense – an emergency organization. Nine people died in total, according to Lebanese authorities.

BBC News teams went to the scene and tried to piece together what happened.

“I felt like my heart was going to stop – it was beating so hard,” one witness told the BBC.

The sound of a missile hitting a 12-story building was heard in the Lebanese capital and smoke was still billowing in the air the next morning.

The targeted building is located in Bachoura, a residential area of ​​the city, and a few meters from the Lebanese Parliament.

It is more than 4km (2.5 miles) from Dahieh, where Hezbollah is based and which has been the focus of Israeli strikes in recent weeks – including one that killed the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah last week.

The IDF has carried out hundreds of strikes in Lebanon over the past week and a half in an effort to dismantle Hezbollah’s leadership and its ability to fire rockets, missiles and drones at Israel – something the Iran-backed group has been doing almost daily. since Hamas, its Palestinian ally, launched a deadly offensive in southern Israel nearly a year ago, the war in Gaza began.

Tens of thousands have died in the fighting since, mostly Palestinians in Gaza, and dozens of strikes have been targeted in Beirut in recent days. And in Lebanon more than 2,000 people have died, according to the Ministry of Health.

On the second floor of the upper floor of Bachoura, under many houses, there was a medical center run by the Islamic Health Committee (IHC), affiliated with Hezbollah.

The group has a very wide network of services that reach supermarkets and schools. It provides medical assistance to people living in areas with a strong Hezbollah presence, who rely on its facilities for treatment, medicine and emergency services.

A missile hit one of these facilities shortly after midnight.

Eyewitnesses said that the area was busy when the explosion was heard and the children started screaming.

Efforts to clear the debris were still ongoing when BBC teams arrived at the scene on Thursday morning.

Medical equipment such as gloves and masks were seen in the dangerous area.

Hassan Ammar, 82, told the BBC that he had lived in the building that was hit for 24 years with his wife and two daughters.

He described the health service in his building as “helping all the people of Lebanon” and “like the Red Cross, but for Muslims”.

“When we heard the strike, I ran out of the building with my wife and daughters, our house was destroyed,” he said.

“This is a people’s place – why would they target a people’s place?”

The IDF has not commented on the Bachoura strike but has repeatedly said it does not target civilian infrastructure.

The next morning, Amin Sherri – a Hezbollah member of parliament – arrived at the scene full of journalists.

In 2019, he was designated a terrorist financier by the US Treasury Department, which accused him of threatening Lebanese bank officials and their families after closing the accounts of a member of Hezbollah.

The US also accused him of having “deep ties” to Hezbollah’s financiers, and released a photo showing Sherri alongside the late Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the Revolutionary Guards overseas unit before he was killed. US strike in Iraq in 2020.

Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist organization by the UK, US and European Union.

On Thursday morning, Sherri held an impromptu news conference at the strike site and accused the IDF of deliberately attacking the medical center.

He said: “We will continue this protest and confrontation, and we will not abandon our responsibilities.”

In the morning, there was chaos outside the destroyed Bachoura health center – and a palpable sense of anger.

“When we heard the airstrikes, we ran out of the building, the children were screaming, sometimes you feel like your heart is going to stop,” said one man.

He emphasized that the medical center serves the majority of the local population and has no political or military function.

BBC News was unable to get inside the abandoned building.

People who live above the center said they do not know where they will go at night.

Kamal, an emergency worker at the center, said that the staff was recently increased due to the wars.

“That’s why most of the dead were doctors,” he said. Some of the dead were sleeping when the missile hit, he said.

The Bachoura strike was criticized by European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, who said the IDF “retargeted health workers”.

He said the strike killed civilians in a densely populated area, and denied others access to emergency aid, before describing it as a violation of international humanitarian law.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization said that 28 health workers were killed in the last 24 hours in Lebanon, and many more “did not report to work” because they were forced to flee.

Israel says it is necessary to take Hezbollah so that people in the north of the country can return to their homes.

BBC News has contacted the IDF for comment.

Additional reporting by Sean Seddon and Carine Torbey