LThe Israeli army carried out a new round of strikes on the south of Beirut, stronghold of the Shiite movement Hezbollah, in the night from Thursday to Friday, in one of the most violent raids since Israel intensified its bombing campaign on the country on September 23.
The Israeli army said Thursday that it would continue to inflict “severe blows” on Hezbollah, after three days of ground fighting against the armed Islamist movement in southern Lebanon which cost the lives of nine Israeli soldiers.
According to official figures, nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in a year of cross-border violence between Hezbollah and the Israeli army, including more than a thousand since September 23. The Lebanese government estimates the number of displaced people at around 1.2 million.
Thursday evening, “Israel struck the southern suburbs (of Beirut) eleven times in a row,” said a source close to the Islamist movement, on condition of anonymity.
The official Lebanese news agency ANI reported “more than ten consecutive strikes”, in “one of the most violent raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli war against Lebanon”. .
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Balls of flame
According to AFP correspondents, the strikes triggered car alarms and shook buildings in a wide area.
AFP images showed giant balls of flame rising from the targeted site, with thick smoke and flares. The strikes resonated as far as mountainous regions outside Beirut, according to the ANI agency.
“During the night, the ground shook beneath our feet. The sky lit up” because of the force of the strikes and “the neighborhood became a ghost town,” Mohammed Sheaito, a 31-year-old taxi driver in the southern suburbs of Beirut, told AFP.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced on the night of Thursday to Friday the deaths of 37 people in 24 hours in various Israeli strikes.
One of Thursday’s strikes hit Hezbollah’s “intelligence headquarters” near Beirut, according to the Israeli army.
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