The aftermath of Tuesday’s Israeli airstrike on Dahieh in south Beirut, Lebanon. The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that at least three people were killed and seven others were injured in the attack which came in the early hours. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE
At least three people were killed and seven injured early Tuesday after Israeli warplanes struck a southern suburb of Beirut for the second time in four days, threatening a tenuous four-month-long cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, the casualties were all in the Dahieh district in the southern part of Beirut, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group. Advertisement
The strike in the middle of the night caused a building to collapse and unlike Friday’s airstrike in response to rockets being fired into Israel where the Israeli military issued an evacuation order ahead of time, no warning was given before the attack.
Israel Defense Forces said on its official account on Telegram that the strike targeted a Hezbollah commander whom it said had “recently directed and assisted Hamas operatives in the planning of a significant terror attack against Israeli civilians.”
The IDF said that due to the immediate danger posed by the individual, it acted in cooperation with the Israeli Security Agency to “eliminate” him and remove the threat.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun rejected Israel’s claim. Condemning the airstrike as a “flagrant violation” of the Nov. 27 cease-fire he said it foreshadowed Israel’s purpose regarding his country. Advertisement
“A serious warning about premeditated intentions against Lebanon,” he wrote in an early Tuesday post on X in which he pledged to buttress against “Israeli aggression” on Lebanese soil with backing from the international community.
“Israel’s persistence in its aggression requires us to exert more effort to address Lebanon’s friends around the world and rally them in support of our right to full sovereignty over our land.”
An Israeli airstrike Friday destroyed a building in a densely populated residential and commercial area of Dahieh with two schools in the vicinity. Israel said it was targeting a drone storage facility belonging to Hezbollah’s aerial unit.
There were no casualties but the Lebanese Ministry of Health said three people, including one woman, were killed and 18 injured, mostly women and children, in a strike on a village in southern Lebanon, one of several areas targeted in an Israeli aerial assault.
Israel said the airstrikes and artillery fire were retaliation for two rockets fired across the border toward Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding area in northern Israel.
Hezbollah denied any responsibility for the rocket fire saying it was fully committed to the cease-fire deal with Israel in which it agreed to end a 14-month campaign of cross-border attacks on Israel in support of besieged Gaza and pullback north of the Litani River in return for Israel forces withdrawing from southern Lebanon. Advertisement
