BEIRUT: Massive consecutive strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Sunday (Oct 6), Reuters eyewitnesses said, sending booms across the Lebanese capital and sparking flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometres away.
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 Israeli military said that before the strike, it took steps “to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warnings to the population in the area”.
For days Israel has bombed Beirut suburbs considered strongholds for the Iran-backed armed group, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and possibly his potential successor.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, the potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli air strike near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.
The Israeli military said it eliminated Nasrallah in a strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut on Sep 27. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed.
Lebanese security sources said Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential area and Hezbollah stronghold south of central Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of Thursday night’s attack.
Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine.
His loss would be another blow to the group and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel has been expanding its actions in Lebanon. On Saturday, it made its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.
