Israel-Hezbollah war: Israeli army strikes group financing Hezbollah

The Lebanese national news agency Ani reported four strikes carried out Sunday evening by Israel on the southern suburbs of Beirut against several offices of a financial institution linked to Hezbollah, whose residents the Israeli army had called on to evacuate. surroundings.

According to Ani, four strikes in several areas of the southern suburbs of Beirut targeted “subsidiaries of Al-Qard al-Hassan”, a financial company under American sanctions, and accused by Israel of financing the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement. .

The financial company “Al-Qard al-Hassan is involved in financing Hezbollah’s terrorist operations,” Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, said in a message in Arabic on X. The army “has therefore decided to target its infrastructure”, he added, calling, shortly before, on the population living nearby to move away “immediately”.

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“We will attack many targets in the coming hours and other targets during the night,” army spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a press briefing. The financial organization, which has various branches in Lebanon, has been targeted by American economic sanctions since 2007, accused of links with the Lebanese Islamist movement. It is also considered by Saudi Arabia to be a terrorist entity.

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According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the group was used by Hezbollah to conceal its economic activities and gain access to the global financial system. After a bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, accompanied since September 30 by a ground offensive to push the fighters of the pro-Iranian formation far from its border, Israel wants to reduce its capacity to finance its operations. The group “does not belong to the Lebanese state, it belongs to Hezbollah”, underlined a senior official of the Israeli intelligence services, during a separate briefing with the press. “The main objective is to weaken trust between Hezbollah and a large part of the Shiite community who use” this company as a bank, he explained.

Hezbollah, for its part, claimed responsibility for rocket attacks in northern Israel, targeting in particular three military bases near Haifa and Safed, as well as against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.