SUSPECTED DRONE PRODUCTION
One resident described grabbing her children and fleeing her home in the southern suburbs after receiving an ominous warning before the strikes.
“I got a phone call from a stranger who said he was from the Israeli army,” said the woman, Violette, who declined to give her last name.
Israel also issued an evacuation warning for the village of Ain Qana, located in southern Lebanon around 20km from the Israeli border.
The Israeli military then launched a strike on a building there that it alleged was a Hezbollah base, ANI reported.
Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah engaged in more than a year of hostilities that began with the outbreak of the Gaza war and culminated in an intense Israeli bombing campaign and ground incursion into southern Lebanon.
The November ceasefire sought to end the fighting – which left Hezbollah severely weakened – but Israel has continued to regularly carry out strikes in Lebanon’s south.
Strikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs, considered a Hezbollah stronghold, have been rare, however.
“Following Hezbollah’s extensive use of UAVs as a central component of its terrorist attacks on the state of Israel, the terrorist organisation is operating to increase production of UAVs for the next war,” the military statement said, calling the activities “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.
Under the truce, Hezbollah fighters were to withdraw north of the Litani river, about 30km from the border, and dismantle their military posts to the south.
Israel was to pull all its troops from Lebanon, but it has kept them in five positions it deems “strategic” along the frontier.
The Lebanese army has been deploying in the south and removing Hezbollah infrastructure there, with prime minister Salam saying Thursday that it had dismantled “more than 500 military positions and arms depots” in the area.
