Images verified by AFP on Monday showed massive detonations in a Lebanese village bordering Israel, where hundreds of houses were destroyed by the Israeli army according to a local official. Aerial images posted on social networks show the dynamiting of more than a dozen buildings in Meiss el-Jabal, in southern Lebanon.
Seven villages blown up
Thick mushrooms of smoke rose into the sky, testifying to the intensity of the explosions. Since Israel launched a ground operation in late September in southern Lebanon, numerous images taken by its army from the air have shown similar scenes in several border villages, including Mheibib, near Meiss el-Jabal. Israel says it wants to neutralize pro-Iranian Hezbollah in the sector, against which it has been at open war for more than a month, and move it away from the border, in order to allow the return of northern residents who have fled its incessant fire. for a year.
Hezbollah, for its part, accuses the Israeli army of pursuing “a scorched earth policy” and of wanting to create a “no man's land” on the border. Video from Meiss el-Jabal shows huge explosions near a hospital, which was evacuated according to Mayor Abdel-Moneem Choukair. “70% of Meiss el-Jabal is destroyed,” he told AFP, even though the locality has some 1,200 houses. “The objective of the Israeli enemy is the systematic destruction” of the village, assured the mayor.
He said that the village had been deserted by its inhabitants but that four people, aged 85 to 90, were still stuck there waiting to be rescued by the Red Cross and the Lebanese army. In a statement Monday, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati denounced Israeli “crimes of murder and destruction.”
At the end of October, the Lebanese news agency Ani listed seven border villages where Israeli forces dynamited houses day after day. On October 26, the Israeli army claimed to have used “400 tons of explosives” to destroy “a tunnel” housing Hezbollah's “anti-tank missiles” and “RPG rockets” in the village of Adaissé, located on the border. .
