Israeli forces bomb hotel in Beirut, residential building in Lebanon’s east 

Israeli strikes have hit a hotel in the Lebanese capital and a residential complex in Lebanon’s east, as the military issued more forced displacement orders for Beirut and towns across the country under heavy fire.

Israeli forces bombed the Comfort Hotel on the border of Hazmieh and Baabda, which are part of greater Beirut, Lebanese state media said Wednesday.

Footage verified by Al Jazeera showed a building with blown-out windows and walls, and debris strewn everywhere.

Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from Beirut, said the attack happened without any warning, indicating that this could have been an attempted assassination.

“The Israeli military is yet to say exactly who or what it was attempting to target,” Pett said.

There have been further attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday. Israel says it’s targeting Hezbollah in the densely populated civilian area.

More than 40 people have now been killed in Lebanon in Israeli attacks since this front of the war ignited.

Lebanese army officials told Al Jazeera that at least four people were wounded, including one in critical condition.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson issued new forced displacement orders for residents of the Haret Hreik neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The spokesperson released a map of the Lebanese capital with buildings marked in red and warned that people should flee the site, claiming it was “affiliated with Hezbollah”.

The Israeli military also issued an “urgent warning”, calling on people to leave 16 towns in southern Lebanon. It later called on residents in an additional 13 towns in Lebanon’s south to evacuate.

This comes in addition to forced displacement orders issued on Tuesday for more than 50 towns across southern Lebanon that would allow Israel to establish a larger buffer zone there.

In the eastern city of Baalbek, which is close to the Syrian border, at least four people were killed and 11 were wounded in a strike on a residential building in the al-Matraba neighbourhood.

Footage from the scene, verified by Al Jazeera, shows the debris of a collapsed multistorey building as rescue workers begin to look through the rubble.

A separate Israeli air attack on Aramoun and Saadiyat, in the Mount Lebanon area, killed at least six people and wounded eight, according to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television.

Hezbollah claimed in the early hours of Wednesday to have fired rockets at Israeli forces in the town of Metulla in northern Israel after carrying out a missile attack on the naval base in Haifa.

The Israeli military said it identified several projectiles from Lebanese territory and that most were intercepted, except for one that fell in an open area.

The army also said it would “not tolerate any presence of representatives of the Iranian … regime in Lebanon” and gave them 24 hours to leave the country or face attacks.

Human Rights Watch said people who are not directly involved in hostilities cannot be targeted under international law.

“The suggestion that Israeli forces will target Iranian government officials who do not leave Lebanon is both deeply disturbing and an admission of an intent to commit a war crime,” the watchdog said in a statement.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be escalating.

“There is no front line and no mediation or diplomatic effort to end it,” she said.