QANA, Lebanon — Israeli airstrikes pounded areas across Lebanon, killing at least 27 people, officials said Wednesday, including more than a dozen in a southern town where Israeli bombardments in previous conflicts are seared into local memory.

Elsewhere in the south, a city’s mayor was among the dead in a strike that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting about relief efforts.

The Israeli military said they were targeting a Hezbollah commander in the strikes late Tuesday on the southern town of Qana, where 15 people were killed. Photos and video of the scene showed several flattened buildings and others with their top floors collapsed. Rescue workers carried away the remains of dead people and used a bulldozer to remove rubble, as they searched for more victims.

Israel said the target was Jalal Mustafa Hariri, Hezbollah’s commander in charge of the Qana area.

In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more, including four U.N. peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

“Qana always gets its share,” said Mayor Mohammed Krasht, referring to the town’s grim history.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, meanwhile accused Israel of “intentionally targeting” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed. “What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?” he asked in a statement.

Strikes continued across Lebanon, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley and Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah command centers and weapons facilities that had been embedded in civilian areas.

Iran-backed Hezbollah launched more than 90 projectiles toward Israel on Wednesday, wounding four civilians, according to Israel Rescue Services.

Israel also resumed its barrage on Beirut’s southern suburbs after a six-day pause, hitting what it said was an arms warehouse under an apartment building, without providing evidence. The military warned residents to evacuate before the strike, and there were no reports of casualties.

During an assessment of the situation in Israel’s north Wednesday, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was gleaning intelligence from their capture of Hezbollah militants that was significantly weakening Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks. “We will conduct negotiations under fire, I said that on the first day, I said it in Gaza, I said it here — this is our tool,” he told soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.

The strikes on southern Beirut came after Mikati said the United States had given him assurances that Israel would curb its strikes on the capital.

Hezbollah has a strong presence in southern Beirut, known as the Dahiyeh, which is also a residential and commercial area home to many civilians and people unaffiliated with the militant group.

The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on the social platform X ahead of the strike in Beirut. An AP photographer saw three airstrikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the notice.

In Nabatiyeh, more than half a dozen strikes hit the city and surrounding areas, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which said at least six people were killed and 43 wounded, with rescue efforts still underway.

The city’s mayor, Ahmad Kahil, was among those killed, provincial governor Huwaida Turk said.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called reports of Kahlil’s death “alarming.”