Intense Israeli bombardments on Beirut

Violent Israeli aerial bombardments on the southern suburbs of Beirut terrorized residents of the Lebanese capital on Sunday, the eve of the first anniversary of the Palestinian Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza.

The official Lebanese news agency ANI reported that more than “30 strikes” hit several sectors of the southern suburbs during the night, stronghold of pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which according to Israel has already lost “440 fighters” since Monday.

South of Beirut a ball of fire rose into the air illuminating the night in the capital where an AFP correspondent saw dozens of people fleeing the Sabra district on foot or on motorbikes as the explosions rang out in background.

Mehdi Zaïter, 60, a greengrocer in the southern suburbs of Beirut, told AFP that “there were strikes from all sides. They had no military target, only civilian buildings and private property , he gets carried away.

“It was the most violent night we had ever experienced. There was so much bombing that it looked like an earthquake,” continues the man who still refuses to leave his house.

In the southern suburbs, the destruction is enormous and affects many buildings, reported an AFP photographer. Excavators are busy clearing debris from the old airport road, while the strikes continued on Sunday morning.

After weakening Hamas during reprisals still ongoing in the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel moved most of its operations in mid-September to the Lebanese front, opened by Hezbollah in support of the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 8, 2023.

But on Sunday, the Israeli army announced “surrounding” the Jabaliya area, in the north of the Gaza Strip, where it believes Hamas is rebuilding its capabilities.

And Gaza Civil Defense reported 21 dead in an Israeli strike on a mosque transformed into a shelter for displaced people in Deir al-Balah (center).

The Israeli army explained that it had “carried out a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating in a command center (…) in a structure that previously served as a mosque”

On the Lebanese front, the Israeli army indicated that it had “carried out a series of targeted strikes in the Beirut region on several weapons storage facilities and sites belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah” and will “continue to operate to dismantle Hezbollah’s capabilities.”

Hezbollah, for its part, said it targeted an Israeli army force with shells during the night after an infiltration attempt in the Blida area in southern Lebanon.

Additionally, he claimed to have targeted a group of Israeli soldiers “with a salvo of rockets” during the “evacuation of wounded and dead soldiers” in the Manara border region at 12:45 a.m. local time on Sunday and also claimed responsibility for an attack by drones against an Israeli military base in northern Israel.

The Lebanese Prime Minister called for “pressuring Israel” for a ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to deliver a speech to the nation on Monday to mark the anniversary of the Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza on October 7.

Over the past year, 41,825 people have been killed in the devastated Palestinian territory, according to figures from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry published on Saturday, data deemed reliable by the UN.

The unprecedented Hamas assault on October 7 in Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the strip. from Gaza. Of the 251 people kidnapped then, 97 are still hostages in Gaza: 64 presumed alive and 33 dead.

In Lebanon, the Netanyahu government wants to put an end to Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, launched on October 8 in support of Hamas, and allow tens of thousands of displaced people to return to their homes in northern Israel.

After an Israeli bombing on Beirut on Friday, a Hezbollah official told AFP that contact was “lost” with Hachem Safieddine, potential successor to Hassan Nasrallah, considered the most powerful man in Lebanon and killed by Israel on September 27.

Since October 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than a thousand since the intensification of Israeli strikes on September 23, according to the authorities. Around 1.2 million people have been displaced.

On Saturday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, estimated that Lebanon was going through a “terrible crisis”, while the UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, highlighted warns against an “alarming increase in attacks on health services”.

“Healthcare workers pay the heaviest price, that of their lives. The health system is on the verge of collapse,” he warned, while hospitals have suspended their activity due to Israeli strikes.