Beirut has been left in ruins after Israel struck Hezbollah’s headquarters in Lebanon’s capital where a top leader was thought to be hiding.
DETAILS OF THE ATTACK
The IDF said it targeted the HQ under residential buildings this afternoon after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the fight against the ‘terror organisation’.
Israel targeted the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his top commanders in the ‘unprecedented’ attack and was ‘checking’ if he was present, sources told Israeli media, in what the US Secretary of State dubbed a ‘precarious moment for the world’.
A source close to Hezbollah told Reuters that Nasrallah is still alive, and Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported he was safe but the group itself has not spoken on his fate.
However, another source said that Hezbollah’s senior leadership was unreachable following Israel’s strikes.
NUMBER OF CASUALTIES
More than 90 people were injured and the Lebanese health ministry claims six people have died, but the number of casualties is expected to rise.
Further attacks resumed on Beirut this evening, with explosions reported in parts of the city and three buildings hit.
Israel’s Channel 12 quoted an official as saying ominously: ‘Israel is going to war’.
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Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that the earlier Israeli strikes had destroyed four buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, causing many casualties. The IDF subsequently confirmed it had attacked Hezbollah in Da’aheh, Beirut on its social media pages.
‘As of this time, there is no change in the directives of the Home Front Command. We will update any changes immediately on the official platforms of the Home Front Command,’ it said.
Iran’s embassy in Beirut described the strikes as a ‘dangerous, game-changing escalation’, calling them a ‘crime’ that merits ‘appropriate punishment’.
