Israeli strikes pound Beirut, southern Lebanon ahead of anticipated ceasefire
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Smoke billows over Beirut's southern suburbs following a wave of Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah's stronghold.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BEIRUT – Israeli strikes pounded a densely populated part of the Lebanese capital and its southern suburbs on Nov 26, hours ahead of an anticipated ceasefire deal
A strike on Beirut hit the Al-Nuwairi district with no evacuation warning and killed at least one person, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a preliminary toll.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said a four-storey building housing displaced families was hit.
Minutes later, at least 10 Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs. Those began about 30 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for 20 locations in the area, the largest such warning yet.
As the strikes were under way, Israel’s military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Avichay Adraee, said the air force was conducting a “widespread attack” on Hezbollah targets across the city.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli army said in a statement it carried out raids in the Litani River region, north of which Israel wants to push Hezbollah.
In another statement, the military said the Israeli air force struck around 30 targets belonging to the Iran-backed group in southern Lebanon since early on Nov 26.
Although sirens were activated in northern Israel, the country’s army had not reported any projectiles crossing from Lebanon into Israel.
Rescuers search the rubble of a building following an Israeli air strike on Beirut’s Al-Nuwairi district on Nov 26.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
‘Terror targets’
In the Litani River region, the army said “soldiers raided several terrorist targets, engaged in close-quarters combat with terrorists, located and destroyed dozens of launchers, thousands of rockets and missiles and weapons storage facilities hidden in the mountainside”.
It said in a second statement that the air force struck “approximately 30 Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon”.
They included “the launcher used to fire projectiles at the Western Galilee area yesterday (Nov 24), weapons storage facilities, terrorist infrastructure sites, command centres and additional launchers”.
The army published a flurry of statements on Nov 25 detailing its strikes against Hezbollah across Lebanon, including the Dahiyeh area in southern Beirut.
“Over the past week, the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) struck approximately 30 Hezbollah terrorist targets throughout the (Dahiyeh) area in Beirut,” the army said in another statement, adding that it included command centres belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence unit.
The war in Lebanon followed nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah.
The Lebanese group said it was acting in support of Hamas after the Palestinian group’s Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israel
Lebanon says at least 3,768 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them in the past few weeks.
On the Israeli side, the Lebanon hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, the authorities say. AFP, REUTERS
