Israeli air strikes caused widespread destruction in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday morning, with the Israeli military stating that it had targeted and destroyed Hezbollah positions.
The attacks followed an unprecedented evacuation warning issued by the Israeli army for the area, home to hundreds of thousands of residents.
AFPTV footage showed rubble and dust covering a main road in one neighbourhood, while surrounding apartment buildings were heavily damaged.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported late on Thursday that strikes since Monday had killed 123 people.
By Friday morning, the streets were deserted, with the only movement coming from a bulldozer clearing debris. Smoke rose from the remains of a building that had been levelled, while nearby structures suffered severe damage.
The official National News Agency reported a series of Israeli air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, overnight, targeting multiple neighbourhoods.
The Israeli military said it had carried out 26 waves of strikes on the area since Lebanon was drawn into the conflict four days ago, including Thursday night’s raids against “command centres and multi-storey structures used as terror sites".
It added that Thursday night’s strikes had destroyed “an executive council’s command centre and a facility storing UAVs (drones) used by Hezbollah to conduct attacks against the State of Israel".
Following the Israeli evacuation warning on Thursday afternoon, a mass exodus took place from the Hezbollah stronghold, whose population is estimated at between 600,000 and 800,000.
Dozens of strikes in southern Lebanon
The Middle East war spread to Lebanon when Iran-backed Hezbollah launched a rocket attack at Israel early on Monday, claiming it was to “avenge” the killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the US-Israeli strikes on Tehran the previous Saturday.
Israel responded swiftly, continuing air strikes across Lebanon, ordering the evacuation of hundreds of square kilometres of southern territory, and deploying ground forces across the border.
Israeli air raids persisted throughout the night in southern Lebanon. The National News Agency reported strikes on dozens of villages in southern and eastern Lebanon, coinciding with the Israeli army chief of staff’s announcement on Thursday evening that forces in southern Lebanon had been instructed to expand control in the region.
Hezbollah claimed new attacks on northern Israel on Friday, including a previous strike on a naval base in Haifa. At dawn, the group announced that it had targeted a cluster of Israeli vehicles advancing towards the town of Khiam, around six kilometres from the border, and “forced them to retreat”.
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