Israel batters Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far

[Pelican Press 0]

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******* batters Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far

******** air attacks have battered Beirut’s southern suburbs in the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since ******* sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah last month.

During Saturday night and into Sunday morning, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometres away.

It was the single biggest ******* of *******’s ******** on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.

On Sunday a grey haze hung over the city and rubble was strewn across streets in the southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over the area.

“Last night was the most ********* 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.

Videos posted on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed fresh damage to the highway that runs from Beirut airport through its southern suburbs into downtown.

******* said its air force had “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities and ********** infrastructure sites belonging to the Hezbollah ********** organisation in the area of Beirut”.

Lebanese authorities did not immediately say what the missiles had hit or what damage they caused.

This weekend’s intense bombardment came just ahead of the anniversary of the October 7 ******* by ************ militant group ****** on southern ******* in which some 1200 people were ******* and more than 250 taken ********, according to ******** figures.

The target of *******’s air strikes across Lebanon and its ground invasion in the south of the country is the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Iran’s chief ally in the region.

More than 2000 people have been ******* in nearly a year of fighting, most of them in the past two weeks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry said on Sunday that 23 people had been ******* on Saturday.

The ******* Nations’ ******** chief said on Sunday that there were “many instances” where ******** air strikes had violated international law by hitting civilian infrastructure and ******** civilians in Lebanon.

******* says it targets military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians, while Lebanese authorities say civilians have been targeted. ******* accuses both Hezbollah and ****** of hiding among civilians, which they deny.

For days ******* has bombed the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh – considered a stronghold for Hezbollah but also home to thousands of ordinary Lebanese, ************ and Syrian refugees – ******** its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on September 27.

A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an ******** air strike on Thursday near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.

******* continues to ***** the area of the strike, preventing rescue workers from reaching it, Lebanese security sources said.

Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine.

His loss would be another ***** to the group and its patron Iran. ******** strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in recent weeks, have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership.

*******’s war in Gaza, launched after the October 7 attacks and aimed at eliminating ******, another Iran-backed group, has ******* nearly 42,000 people, ************ authorities say. The coastal enclave ***** in ruins.

At least 26 people were ******* and 93 others wounded when ******** air strikes hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, the ******-run Gaza government media office said. The ******** military said it had conducted “precise strikes on ****** terrorists”.

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