A powerful airstrike killed 11 people in central Beirut on Saturday, the Lebanese civil defence said, shaking the capital as Israel pressed its offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

The attack destroyed an eight-storey building and caused a large number of fatalities and injuries, Lebanon's National News Agency said. Footage broadcast by Lebanon's Al Jadeed station showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it, Reuters reported.

Israel used bunker buster bombs in the strike, leaving a deep crater, the agency said. Beirut smelled strongly of explosives hours after the attack.

The blasts shook the capital at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT). Security sources said at least four bombs were dropped in the attack.

It marked the fourth Israeli airstrike this week targeting a central area of Beirut, in contrast to the bulk of Israel's attacks on the capital region, which have hit the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs. On Sunday an Israeli airstrike killed a Hezbollah media official in the Ras al-Nabaa district of central Beirut.

Rescuers searched through rubble, in an area of the city known for its antique shops.

HOSPITALISED DAUGHTER

A man whose family was hurt tried to comfort a traumatized woman outside a hospital. Car windows were shattered.

"There was dust and wrecked houses, people running and screaming, they were running, my wife is in hospital, my daughter is in hospital, my aunt is in the hospital," said the man, Nemir Zakariya, who held up a picture of his daughter.

"This is the little one, and my son also got hurt - this is my daughter, she is in the American University (of Beirut Medical Centre), this is what happened."

Israel launched a major offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon in September, following nearly a year of cross-border hostilities ignited by the Gaza war, pounding wide areas of Lebanon with airstrikes and sending troops into the south.

Israeli strikes killed at least 62 people and injured 111 in Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the toll since October 2023 to 3,645 dead and 15,355 injured, Lebanon's health ministry said. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government accuse Israel of indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians. Israel denies the allegation and says it takes numerous steps to avoid the deaths of civilians.

Hezbollah strikes in the same period have killed more than 100 people in northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They include more than 70 soldiers killed in strikes in northern Israel and the Golan Heights and in combat in southern Lebanon, according to Israel.

The conflict began when Hezbollah, Tehran's most important ally in the region, opened fire in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas after it launched the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.

A U.S. mediator travelled to Lebanon and Israel this week in an effort to secure a ceasefire. The envoy, Amos Hochstein, indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused the United States of ramping up tension and provocations, saying the Korean peninsula has never faced a greater risk of nuclear war, state media KCNA said on Friday.

The comments came amid international criticism over increasingly close military co-operation between Pyongyang and Moscow, and assertions that North Korea sent more than 10,000 troops to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Previous negotiations with Washington have only highlighted its "aggressive and hostile" policy toward North Korea, Kim said in a speech at a military exhibition in Pyongyang, the capital, the KCNA news agency said.

"Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war," he said on Thursday.

"We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States," he said, adding that the talks had only shown its aggressive and hostile policy toward North Korea could never change.

North Korean state media have not yet publicly mentioned the re-election of Donald Trump, who held three unprecedented meetings with Kim during his first term, in Singapore, Hanoi, and at the Korean border, in 2018 and 2019.

But their diplomacy yielded no concrete outcome due to the gap between U.S. calls for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and Kim's demands for sanctions relief.

Trump has long touted his ties with Kim, saying last month the two countries would have had "a nuclear war with millions of people killed", but he had stopped it, thanks to his ties with the North's leader.

Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said Kim could be trying to underscore the North's nuclear capabilities ahead of Trump's second term, while leaving the door open for diplomacy.

"He might be suggesting Trump should show his 'willingness to co-exist' before re-opening any talks and calling for a change in the U.S. hostile attitude," Hong said.

MILITARY EXHIBITION

Kim also called for developing and upgrading "ultra-modern" versions of weaponry, and vowed to keep advancing defence capabilities to bolster the North's strategic position, KCNA said.

Strategic and tactical weapons were on display at the event, called the Defence Development Exhibition.

KCNA pictures showed the Hwasong-19 and 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Chollima-1 rocket used in a successful satellite launch in November 2023, and the Saetbyol-9 multi-purpose attack drone, which resembles the U.S. Reaper.

Hong said the pictures also included several weapons needed by or presumed to already have been supplied to Russia for its war in Ukraine, such as 240mm multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, anti-tank systems and drones.

North Korea has shipped additional arms to Russia, the South's lawmakers said on Thursday, after being briefed by the national intelligence agency.

Last year, when he was defence minister, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu accompanied Kim to a defence fair that showcased missiles and weapons.

Last week, Kim urged the North's military to improve its war-fighting capabilities, blaming the United States and its allies for stoking tension to "the worst phase in history" and calling the Korean peninsula "the world's biggest hotspot".

Judges at the International Criminal Court have issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, Reuters reported on Thursday afternoon.

The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20, that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct.7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.

The ICC said Israel's acceptance of the court's jurisdiction was not required.

Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.

Israel has said it killed Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike but Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied this.