More than 50 people died on Saturday in Israeli strikes in Lebanon, particularly in Beirut. Before dawn, residents of Beirut woke up to the sound of large explosions, after Israeli strikes destroyed a building in the Basta district, in the heart of Beirut, causing a huge crater.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported at least 15 dead and 63 injured in Beirut. Search operations are continuing to find victims under the rubble.
At least 38 people were also killed in Israeli strikes in eastern and southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
A senior Hezbollah official was targeted
“We were sleeping and suddenly we heard three or four missiles. The strike was so powerful that I thought the building was going to collapse on us,” Samir, a resident of Basta, told AFP.
A Lebanese security source claimed that a “senior Hezbollah official was targeted” by the raid – without being able to say whether he had died – but a Hezbollah MP, Amin Cherri, denied that a leader of the movement had been targeted at Basta.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the strikes, but said it had targeted “Hezbollah command centers and other terrorist infrastructures” in the southern suburbs.
Intense bombing campaign
Israel says it wants to put Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, allies of Iran, its enemy, out of harm's way. He vowed to destroy Hamas after the unprecedented attack of this Islamist movement on its soil on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, and seeks to stop Hezbollah's rocket fire on its territory.
Our file on the war in the Middle East
On October 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas attack on Israel, Hezbollah opened a “support front” for its Palestinian ally. After a year of cross-border violence and after having weakened Hamas in incessantly bombed Gaza, Israel moved the heart of the fighting to Lebanon by launching an intense bombing campaign from September 23 on Hezbollah strongholds. In recent months, Israel has virtually decimated the leadership of the armed movement by killing several of its leaders.
Since October 8, 2023, more than 3,640 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the Ministry of Health, most since September 23.
