Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut on Thursday left two neighborhoods smoldering, killed 22 people and wounded dozens, Lebanon's health ministry said, as well as further escalating Israel's bloody conflict with Hezbollah.

The air raid on central Beirut — the deadliest in over a year of war — apparently targeted two residential buildings in separate neighborhoods simultaneously, according to an AP photographer at the scene. It brought down one apartment building and wiped out the lower floors of the other.

Lebanon’s crisis response unit announced Thursday that 28 people were killed and 113 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,169 killed and 10,212 wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

The report also recorded 61 airstrikes and incidents of shelling in the past day, mostly concentrated in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley.

The International Organization for Migration’s regional director said Thursday that the “support provided so far is minimal” for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli aerial and ground offensive in Lebanon.

There is an “urgent need for help to identify safe places that are able to host people, because from our field visits, most of the places are overwhelmed,” Othman Belbeisi said during a visit to the country.

An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza killed at least 27 people on Thursday, with the toll likely to rise, Palestinian medical officials said.

Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Palestinian enclave even as attention has shifted to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. It launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.

Israel’s ground invasion in Lebanon stretched into its second week, as Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets deep into Israel — with no end in sight to the escalating conflict.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon -- mostly in airstrikes -- and over a million displaced since the fighting intensified in mid-September. At least 15 Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed since the ground operation began, and more than 60,000 people have been displaced from towns along the border for more than a year.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has ordered government agencies to prepare to evacuate Filipinos “by whatever means” from Lebanon.

Marcos held a virtual meeting with key Cabinet members while attending a summit of Southeast Asia leaders in Laos, underscoring the urgency as Israel intensified attacks against Lebanon.

The top U.N. official in Lebanon has repeated her call for an immediate ceasefire, saying the 21-day cease-fire proposal launched by the U.S. and France is still on the table “and very relevant.”

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said that a halt to fighting is the only way to ease “the colossal human suffering that is happening right now,” address Lebanon’s “humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions” and provide a window “for diplomatic efforts to take hold and succeed.”

Israel's defense minister warned on Wednesday that the Israeli retaliation for a recent Iranian missile attack will be "lethal" and "surprising."

"Our strike will be lethal, precise and above all, surprising. They won't understand what happened and how. They will see the results," Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a speech to troops. "Whoever strikes us will be harmed and pay a price."

The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least four people were killed in an Israeli strike in Iqlim al-Kharroub on a hotel-turned-shelter for displaced people in southern Lebanon.

Ten others were wounded in the strike that hit the building in Wardanieh in Lebanon’s Chouf district north of Sidon.

Israel has promised to retaliate for Iran's massive missile attack last week. How it does so involves great risk, and could have major repercussions for the archenemies, the Middle East and the world.

Israel's options range from symbolic strikes on military targets to crippling attacks on Iran's vital oil industry or its secretive and heavily fortified nuclear program.