Four Israeli air strikes reportedly pounded Beirut’s southern suburb after the IDF said it would target infrastructure association with financing Hezbollah in Lebanon on Sunday evening.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that an “enemy aircraft launched a second raid on the southern suburb of Beirut”. Reuters news agency also reported witnesses saying a blast was heard and smoke was seen over Dahiyeh, while a large fire was pictured within Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Panicked crowds clogged the streets and caused traffic jams in some parts of Beirut as they tried to get to neighbourhoods thought to be safer, witnesses said, as hundreds fled their homes.
Lebanese media reported an evacuation of buildings adjacent to the al-Qard al-Hassan branch, a Hezbollah-run banking system that provides loans and banking services mostly to people who live in areas where Hezbollah is popular.
Israel said that the institution finances Hezbollah and that “Hezbollah uses this money to finance its terrorist activities,” including purchasing and storing arms. The bank has 30 branches across Lebanon, including 15 in the densely populated parts of central Beirut and its suburbs.
The institution was sanctioned by the US in 2017 during the Trump administration after it gave Hezbollah access to the international financial system, according to the US Treasury assets such as loans.
Asked by journalists whether the branches could be considered military targets, a senior Israeli intelligence official said: “The purpose of this strike is to target the ability of Hezbollah economic function both during the war but also afterwards to rebuild and to rearm …on the day after.”
It comes as the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said it was once again targeted by the Israeli army. An Israeli army bulldozer “deliberately” demolished an observation tower and perimeter fence of a UN position in Marwahin, United Nations peacekeeping mission UNIFIL said in a statement.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks against UN bases in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army is pressuring the peacekeepers to leave their positions. Israeli forces have wounded at least five peacekeepers and fired smoke rounds at them, shot at monitoring cameras, targeted observation posts and destroyed the gate of a UNIFIL base in Ramiya.
The attacks come as Netanyahu asked UN chief Guterres to move the peacekeepers out of combat zones, alleging that their presence was providing a “human shield” for Hezbollah.
Cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah erupted a year ago, and has since escalated after Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah claim to be attacking Israel in response to its continued onslaught in Gaza, with more than 87 Palestinians killed or missing after Israeli air strikes on northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, as rescuers pull bodies and survivors from the concrete debris of destroyed homes earlier Sunday.
i has reached out to the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said Israeli forces are forcing residents of northern Gaza to leave their homes and shelters while carrying out mass arrests of Palestinian civilians.
The group said it has been warning that the siege imposed on northern Gaza, now in its 16th day, is aimed at “emptying [the] northern Gaza Strip by imposing a strict siege and exterminating and starving the population to force them to leave southwards”.
Quds News Network reported, citing sources in northern Gaza, that Israeli soldiers are burning shelters surrounding the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya after forcibly removing displaced Palestinian families.
The attack in Beit Lahiya comes after Gaza health officials said three partially functioning hospitals treating severely wounded patients and sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza were now out of service after coming under intense Israeli shelling.
Israeli forces bombed al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia early on Saturday and shelled Kamal Adwan and the Indonesian hospitals in Beit Lahiya earlier on Sunday.
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestine Territories posted on X: “Shocking images of summary executions, mass forced displacements, and other egregious abuses strike us, leaving us stunned and bewildered, unable to comprehend that what is happening in Gaza is truly real.
“What a disgraceful testament to our global failure to protect basic human rights.”
