Israeli airstrikes Wednesday hit the Nabatieh, Lebanon municipal building during a crisis meeting, killing at least six people, including the mayor. The IDF said the strikes targeted Hezbollah sites in the Nabatieh area. Rescuers in Nabatieh work following an Israeli military strike on a commercial market there Sunday. Photo by EPA-EFE/STRINGER
Israeli airstrikes Wednesday hit the Nabatieh, Lebanon municipal building during a crisis meeting, killing at least six people, including the mayor.
According to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati, the attacks targeted a municipal council meeting. Israel’s military said the strikes had hit Hezbollah sites in the Nabatieh area. Advertisement
Hezbollah underground weapon storage sites in Beirut’s southern suburbs were the targets of two strikes, the Israeli military said in a statement.
An eyewitness told the BBC the strikes created “frantic terror” as at least nine strikes hit the city within 30 minutes. The local witness said the mayor was at a meeting to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Nabatieh.
The Israeli Defense Forces said in a Telegram post they “struck dozens of Hezbollah terrorist targets in the Nabatieh area and dismantled underground infrastructure used by Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces in southern Lebanon.
“The targets include terrorist infrastructure sites, Hezbollah command centers, and weapons storage facilities, which were embedded by Hezbollah adjacent to civilian infrastructure, exploiting the civilian population as a human shield,” the IDF post said.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters during a briefing Tuesday that the United States is opposed to the “scope and nature” of Israel’s Beirut bombings due to the heavy civilian death toll. Advertisement
“We have made clear to Israel that we oppose the bombing campaign that they had been launching over recent weeks in Beirut,” Miller said.
