News Mania / Piyal Chatterjee / 6th October 2024
The fiercest bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel drastically up its assault against Iran-backed Hezbollah last month targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday. The explosions during the night sent booms over Beirut and caused red and white flashes that could be seen for almost half an hour from a distance of several kilometers.Witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels reported that it was the single biggest attack of Israel’s assault on Beirut thus far.On Sunday, smoke columns rose above the southern suburbs, and a gray cloud covered the city, leaving debris scattered over the streets.
“Last night was the most violence of all the previous nights. Buildings were shaking around us and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of strikes – we couldn’t count them all – and the sounds were deafening,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of the Burj al-Barajneh area in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Israel said its air force had “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities and terrorist infrastructure sites belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of Beirut”.
The rockets’ target and the extent of the damage they caused were not immediately disclosed by Lebanese authorities. The heavy artillery this past weekend coincided with the anniversary of the October 7 attack in southern Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which claimed over 250 lives and 1,200 civilian casualties, according to Israeli officials.The primary ally of Iran in the region, Hezbollah, is the focus of Israel’s bombardment over Lebanon and its ground invasion in the southern part of the nation.
More than 2,000 people have been murdered in nearly a year of conflict, most of them in the past two weeks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. 23 individuals were killed on Saturday, according to the ministry’s Sunday report. Israel has been bombing the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut for days; it is home to thousands of common Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian refugees and is thought to be a stronghold for Hezbollah. On September 27, Israel killed the organization’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Potential successor to Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine, has not been in contact with anyone since Friday, according to a Lebanese security source. This is because Safieddine was reportedly the target of an Israeli bombing on Thursday near the city’s international airport.
According to Lebanese security officials, Israel is still bombing the attack area, making it impossible for rescue personnel to get there. Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine. Losing him would be a further setback for the group and its sponsor, Iran. The past year has seen a rapid acceleration of Israeli strikes around the region, which has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership in recent weeks.
