(Beirut) A series of Israeli strikes targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, on Tuesday morning, shortly after calls from the Israeli army to evacuate four neighborhoods, according to official Lebanese media.
Posted at 6:26 a.m.
Updated at 8:30 a.m.
On AFPTV images, we can see thick columns of gray smoke rising from the targeted neighborhoods, which border Beirut, while the explosions echoed in the capital.
According to the official National News Agency (ANI), ten violent strikes were carried out by the Israeli air force on the southern suburbs.
“For your safety and that of your family members, you must immediately evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them and move away from them to a distance of at least 500 meters,” indicated, shortly before the strikes, the spokesperson for the army in Arabic.
PHOTO MOHAMMAD ZAATARI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
People gather inside a destroyed apartment in a building hit by an Israeli strike in the village of Saksakiyeh, southern Lebanon, November 12, 2024.
In a message on the social network X, Avichay Adraee cited four areas of the southern suburbs.
In neighborhoods almost deserted by residents, heavy gunfire had been heard before, with the aim of alerting people who were not aware of the Israeli call to evacuate, witnesses told AFP.
Five people were killed Tuesday in an Israeli strike on a town in southern Lebanon, located more than 20 kilometers from the border, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said.
According to the ministry, “the Israeli enemy’s raid on Tefahta left five dead”, the official ANI news agency specifying for its part that the strike had targeted an “inhabited house”.
Since the end of September, the Israeli air force has regularly shelled the southern suburbs, where an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people lived.
The last strikes on the suburbs date back to the night of Friday to Saturday.
On September 23, the Israeli army launched a campaign of massive strikes targeting Hezbollah strongholds in particular.
PHOTO MOHAMMAD ZAATARI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Destroyed buildings in Saksakiyeh, southern Lebanon, November 12, 2024.
On Tuesday, raids targeted, according to ANI, the large town of Nabatiyé, in the south of the country, whose historic market has already been destroyed and the mayor killed.
Strikes also targeted the Hermel region in the eastern Bekaa plain, bordering Syria, where Hezbollah is based, according to the agency.
At least five people were killed in an Israeli strike targeting a town east of Beirut, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
“The raid by the Israeli enemy” in the mountainous region of Aley, east of the Lebanese capital, “left five dead and several injured,” the ministry said in a provisional report.
More than 3,240 people have been killed according to Lebanese authorities since the start of clashes in October 2023, when Hezbollah opened the southern Lebanese front with Israel to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip where the Palestinian Islamist movement is at war. against Israel.
Most of the victims have been killed since last September, when Israel launched its bombing campaign and ground offensive in Lebanon.
Two men in their forties were killed Tuesday in rocket fire in northern Israel, Israeli emergency services announced, the Israeli army having reported “around ten projectiles” observed coming from the Lebanon.
Emergency doctor from Magen David Adom (MDA), the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, Dor Vakinin spoke of a rocket attack on a warehouse.
“We carried out medical examinations on two men who were lying unconscious and suffering from serious injuries to their bodies,” he said in a statement. “Unfortunately, their injuries were too serious and after the examinations, we had to declare the death” of the two men.
New crossing point for humanitarian aid in Gaza
The Israeli army announced Tuesday the opening of a new crossing point for humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, ahead of a deadline set by the United States for Israeli authorities to allow the increase aid to the Palestinians.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and eight international NGOs estimated on the same day that the aid entering the Palestinian territory in the grip of a humanitarian crisis was insufficient.
PHOTO AMIR COHEN, ARCHIVES REUTERS
A truck carries humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, at the Kerem Shalom crossing point in southern Israel, November 11, 2024.
“As part of the effort and commitment to increase the volume and routes of aid to the Gaza Strip, the “Kissoufim” crossing point was opened today [mardi] for humanitarian aid trucks,” the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the Israeli body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories.
The American Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, had sent, in a letter dated October 13, a series of demands to Israel to allow the increase in humanitarian aid, giving it 30 days to respond. Failing this, the United States threatened to suspend part of its military assistance to Israel.
The letter discussed, for example, the need for Israel to let in up to 350 humanitarian aid trucks per day, to open a fifth crossing point into the Gaza Strip and to limit evacuation orders to what is strictly necessary. .
The spokesperson for the American State Department, Matthew Miller, announced last Thursday the opening by Israel “in the coming days” of the Kissoufim crossing point, in the center of the Palestinian territory in the grip of a humanitarian crisis.
On Tuesday, eight non-governmental organizations including Oxfam and Save the Children said that, according to their progress score, “Israel has[vait] failed to fulfill the demands of his ally [américain]at enormous human cost to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
PHOTO OMAR AL-QATTAA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Displaced Palestinians cross the main road from Salaheddine towards Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip.
“The facts are clear: the humanitarian situation in Gaza today is at its lowest point since the start of the war in October 2023,” they wrote. “We call on the US government to immediately conclude that Israel is in violation of its commitments.”
For its part, UNRWA, which Israel decided to ban, described humanitarian access to Gaza as “insufficient” in the face of a “simply catastrophic” situation.
On Saturday, a UN report warned of “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip”, particularly in the north.
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. , including hostages killed or died in captivity.
The retaliatory offensive by Israel in Gaza has left more than 43,603 dead, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN.
