BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli airstrikes on Saturday killed at least 11 people and wounded dozens in central Beirut as diplomats struggled to negotiate a ceasefire.

Lebanon’s civil defense said the death toll was provisional as emergency personnel were still digging through the rubble in search of survivors. The strikes were the fourth in the Lebanese capital in less than a week.

The escalation comes after the American envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the region this week in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire agreement to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has erupted into all-out war in the past two months.

Israeli bombing has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and injured more than 15,000, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. It displaced about 1.2 million, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by rockets, drones and rockets in northern Israel and fighting in Lebanon.

The strikes took place at 4am local time, destroying an eight-storey building and leaving a crater in the ground. Also on Saturday, a drone strike killed one person and injured another in the southern port city of Tyre, according to the state-run National News Agency.

The agency said the people killed and injured in Tire were fishermen. An Associated Press journalist who saw the strike from a nearby hotel overlooking the beach said he watched the fishermen setting up their nets beforehand and that they both appeared to be young teenagers.

The strikes came a day after heavy shelling of Beirut’s southern suburbs and as heavy ground fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants continues in southern Lebanon, with Israeli troops pushing further from the border.

The Israeli military did not issue a warning for residents to evacuate before the attacks in central Beirut and did not comment on those strikes or the one in Tyre.

The army said in a statement on Saturday that in the past day it had carried out intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, including several command centers and weapons depots. The army said it issued advance warnings to civilians in the area before the attacks.

The strikes also continued in Gaza on Saturday. At least six people were killed, half of them children and two women, in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Associated Press reporters and staff at Nasser Hospital.

After the attack, AP reporters saw people grieving over what appeared to be the lifeless body of a man, and bloodied children were seen helping each other clear the wreckage.

The death toll from fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas has surpassed 44,000 this week, according to local health officials. Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its numbers, but said more than half of the deaths were women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians. and kidnapping another 250. About 100 hostages are still in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the others were released during last year’s ceasefire.

The Israeli Offensive in Gaza caused heavy destruction over wide areas of coastal territory, causing many to wonder when or how it will ever be rebuilt. About 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million people has been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands live in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services.

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Associated Press reporters Fadi Tawil in Tire, Lebanon, Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem, Israel, Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah and Mohammad Jahjouh in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip contributed

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