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The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported at least six dead and 91 wounded in Israeli airstrikes on Friday evening.
Israel launched heavy bombardment early Saturday in the southern suburbs of Beirut , where hundreds of families fled after an attack on Hezbollah headquarters allegedly targeting the leader of the Islamist movement.
The bombings, the heaviest in Beirut since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah , caused hundreds of people to flee the south of the Mediterranean city, creating traffic jams in the middle of the night on its usually deserted streets.
“We were at home when the order came to evacuate. We took our identity documents, our things and left,” Radwan Msallam, a Syrian refugee and father of six who now has “nowhere to go,” told AFP.
The new bombing campaign against the Lebanese capital began on Friday evening, just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN that the attacks would continue ” until all their objectives are achieved .”
First, the army claimed to have bombed Hezbollah’s “headquarters” with the aim, according to Israeli media, of eliminating its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
A source close to the Islamist movement told AFP that its leader was “fine”, but more than ten hours after the attack there has been no official communication from the party.
Checking the results, according to Israel
“We are still checking the results of the attack on Hezbollah’s headquarters , which is located under civilian buildings in the heart of the Dahieh neighborhood, in an underground space,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari.
“We will update the information as soon as we know. What we know is that our attack was very precise,” he added.
In the early hours of Saturday, the army also claimed to be carrying out “targeted bombings” against Hezbollah weapons caches hidden “under civilian buildings,” accusations that the Islamist group rejected as “false.”
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported at least six dead and 91 wounded in the bombings in Beirut on Friday evening .
Israeli aircraft also struck “terrorist targets” in the southern city of Tyre and said they had killed several Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon, including the commander of the missile unit and his deputy.
In addition, its aircraft are flying over Beirut airport and its surroundings to prevent Iran from sending arms shipments to Hezbollah, the army said.
Stop Netanyahu
This new round of bombings and Netanyahu’s fiery speech at the UN General Assembly, boycotted by many delegations, dashed hopes for a temporary 21-day truce proposed this week by the United States and France.
” No one seems able to stop Netanyahu ,” lamented the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell , who said that the only hope to stop the escalation is the United States, Israel’s main ally and arms supplier.
White House Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged both sides to “stop shooting,” and President Joe Biden stressed that his country had not been informed of the new Israeli operation.
Iran, an ally of Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas, said the new attacks on Beirut constituted a ” war crime” and promised “just punishment . “
In addition, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denounced at a meeting of the UN Security Council the “complicity of the United States in the crimes” of Israel and the “scandalous threats” made by Netanyahu in New York.
Genocidal war
In “response” to the attack on its headquarters, Hezbollah sent a “volley of rockets” towards the town of Safed in northern Israel, and had previously also fired on the port city of Haifa.
In the Beirut district where Hezbollah’s headquarters is located, Israeli shells left six huge craters several metres deep, tons of rubble and a thick grey cloud of dust.
“I thought the building was going to fall on me,” said Abir Hammoud, a teacher in her 40s who survived the blast.
Following the attack, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati accused Israel of waging a “genocidal war” against his country.
Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have intensified since the start of the war in Gaza a year ago and have already left more than 1,500 dead, a higher death toll than the last war between the two in 2006.
The conflict in Gaza threatens to push the entire Middle East into the “abyss of a generalised war with unimaginable consequences”, warned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon this week have killed more than 700 people, health officials say, and displaced some 118,000, according to the UN.
The situation could deteriorate. The Israeli army says it is prepared for a possible ground incursion against Hezbollah, which would be “as short as possible,” a security official said.
Until ‘total victory’ in Gaza
In mid-September, Israel announced that the “center of gravity” of the war against Hamas in Gaza was shifting to the Lebanese border to ensure the return to their homes of tens of thousands of northern residents displaced by hostilities with Hezbollah.
Speaking from the UN rostrum, Netanyahu also vowed to fight until “total victory” in Gaza if Hamas does not hand over its weapons and release all hostages.
The conflict in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, which left 1,205 people dead in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, including the number of hostages killed or killed.
Of the 251 people abducted, 97 remain in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
In retaliation, Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip that has so far left 41,534 dead, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health, considered reliable by the UN.
