Beirut has been left a smouldering wreck after intense IDF airstrikes pounded key Hezbollah targets, including the organisation’s headquarters where a top leader was thought to be hiding, as one official declared Israel was ‘going to war’ with Lebanon.
The intense bombing began just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech at the United Nations in New York on Friday afternoon vowing to continue the fight against the ‘terror organisation’.
WHY NETANYAHU VISITED US
His visit to the US was partly a move designed to ‘trick’ Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah into thinking he was safe while the Israeli premier was away, one senior Israeli official revealed.
And just three hours later, Netanyahu gave the green light to the IDF’s ‘unprecedented’ heavy bombardment of the Lebanese capital during a call to defence minister Yoav Gallant, who remained in Tel Aviv.
DID ISRAEL TELL US ABOUT THE ATTACK
It has since emerged that Israel did not inform the White House of the impending strikes before they began.
Shortly after 5pm, several missiles rained down on the Hezbollah HQ, located under residential buildings in Beirut, where Nasrallah was thought to be located.
Speculation is rife over whether Nasrallah and his top commanders were alive or mortally wounded in the ‘unprecedented’ attack.
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Israel is yet to confirm Nasrallah’s status and is ‘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 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.
