Israel bombs Beirut outskirts, ‘targeting Hizbullah drone workshops'
Israel
launched a large wave of air strikes in the densely populated neighbourhoods south of
Beirut
on Thursday, targeting what it said were underground drone production facilities operated by the Lebanese militant group Hizbullah.
The bombardment marked one of the heaviest on Beirut's southern outskirts, known as the Dahiya, since a US-brokered ceasefire took effect in November, ending Lebanon's deadliest and most destructive war in decades.
The Israeli military accused Hizbullah in a statement of deliberately constructing the drone production sites in civilian areas, and said their existence constituted a violation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon.
The agreement, brokered by the Biden administration, called for Hizbullah's disarmament along with Israel's withdrawal from the country's south, the area bordering Israel that was a Hizbullah stronghold before the war.
READ MORE
However, Israel and Lebanon have both accused each other of failing to fully implement the deal.
Before the bombardment Thursday, the Israeli military ordered residents of three areas in the Dahiya, a tightly packed cluster of neighbourhoods where Hizbullah holds sway, to evacuate from the vicinity of buildings it had highlighted on a map posted to social media.
Hoping to deter the air strikes, the Lebanese military attempted to inspect the buildings flagged by Israel, and had contacted the US-led ceasefire monitoring committee formed after the war, according to a senior Lebanese security official.
However, the Israeli military rejected the request to hold off until the Lebanese had inspected the sites, the official said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.
The evacuation warnings and heavy barrage of strikes that followed – the first in more than a month in Beirut's southern outskirts – came on the eve of Eid al-Adha, a major religious holiday, while the bustling streets of the Dahiya were packed with residents shopping and preparing for the festivities.
People attempting to flee clogged the roads, with long lines of traffic. Over an hour later, the air strikes began and continued late into the night, sending shock waves and thick plumes of smoke over the city skyline.
In the wake of the Hamas-led October 7th attacks on Israel in 2023, and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip, Hizbullah, which is closely tied to Iran, began its cross-border rocket fire into Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and Israel struck in return.
After nearly a year of low-level conflict between Israel and Hizbullah, it escalated into a full-scale war lasting over two months, with intense Israeli bombardment and an invasion by ground forces.
The militant group, once considered the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon, was left severely depleted by the war, and analysts said Hizbullah had little impetus to respond to Israel's repeated strikes since November.
Lebanon's new government has pledged to disarm all nonstate armed groups including Hizbullah, but details of how that will be implemented remain unclear.
Hours before the Israeli air strikes Thursday, Lebanon's prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said in a speech that the government had dismantled 'more than 500 military sites and depots' in the country's south.
Around 200 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire began, according to the Lebanese government, which does not specify how many were civilians.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times
.
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