Israel launched airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut and other areas of Lebanon on Saturday, a day after it carried out a large attack on Hezbollah's headquarters apparently geared toward killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
The fate of Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed group for 32 years, stays unclear and Hezbollah has yet to issue an announcement on his status.
Reuters journalists heard greater than 20 airstrikes in Beirut before dawn on Saturday and more after sunrise. Smoke rose above town's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, referred to as Dahiyeh.
Thousands of individuals have fled the world since Friday's attack, gathering in squares, parks and sidewalks in downtown Beirut and coastal areas.
“They want to destroy Dahiyeh, they want to destroy all of us,” said Sari, a person in his 30s who gave only his first name, referring to the suburb he fled after an Israeli evacuation order. Nearby, in Beirut's Martyrs' Square, the newly displaced people rolled out mats to sleep.
The Israeli military said a rocket fired into central Israel on Saturday hit an open area. The military had previously said that around ten projectiles had crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon and that some had been intercepted.
The Israeli military also said it was attacking Hezbollah targets within the Bekaa Valley, a region in eastern Lebanon on the Syrian border that it attacked last week.
Israel's five hours of continuous attacks on Beirut early Saturday followed Friday's assault, by far Israel's strongest assault on town through the conflict with Hezbollah, which has been fought alongside the Gaza war for nearly a 12 months.
The escalation has sharply increased fears that the conflict could spiral uncontrolled and potentially involve Iran, Hezbollah's most important backer, in addition to the United States.
There was no immediate confirmation of Nasrallah's fate after Friday's heavy attacks, but a source near Hezbollah told Reuters he couldn’t be reached.
Israel has not said whether it tried to attack Nasrallah, but a senior Israeli official said senior Hezbollah commanders were targeted.
“I think it's too early to say… Sometimes they hide the fact when we succeed,” the Israeli official told reporters when asked if Friday's attack killed Nasrallah.
A source near Hezbollah had previously told Reuters that Nasrallah was alive.
The Iranian news agency Tasnim also reported that he was secure. A senior Iranian security official told Reuters that Tehran was reviewing its status.
The Israeli military said in an announcement it killed Hezbollah's missile unit commander Muhammad Ali Ismail and his deputy Hossein Ahmed Ismail.
Israel's attacks in Lebanon have expanded to recent areas this week. On Saturday, an airstrike hit the Lebanese mountain town of Bhamdoun, southeast of Beirut, Lebanese lawmaker for the region Mark Daou told Reuters.
Bhamdoun Mayor Walid Khayrallah told Reuters the strike hit a big empty plot of land and caused no casualties.
Death toll rises
Hours before the newest bombing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations that his country had the precise to proceed the campaign.
“As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to eliminate this threat and return our citizens safely to their homes,” he said.
Several delegations left the room as Netanyahu approached the lectern. He later canceled his trip to New York to return to Israel.
Lebanese health authorities confirmed six dead and 91 injured in the primary attack on Friday – the fourth attack on Hezbollah-controlled southern Beirut suburbs in every week and the worst since a 2006 war.
The toll seemed prone to rise much higher. There was no information on the victims of the later attacks. According to authorities, greater than 700 people were killed in strikes last week.
Hezbollah television channel al-Manar reported that seven buildings were destroyed.
Hours later, the Israeli military ordered residents in parts of Beirut's southern suburbs to evacuate after attacking rocket launchers and weapons depots allegedly housing civilians.
Hezbollah denied that there have been weapons or weapons depots in buildings hit in Beirut's suburbs, an announcement from the group's media office said.
Alaa al-Din Saeed, a resident of a neighborhood Israel identified as a goal, told Reuters he was fleeing along with his wife and three children.
“We found out on TV. There was a lot of turmoil in the neighborhood,” he said. The family grabbed clothes, identification documents and a few money, but got stuck in a traffic jam with others and tried to flee.
“We're going to the mountains. We’ll see how we can spend the night – and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do.”
Around 100,000 people in Lebanon were displaced this week, bringing the variety of displaced people within the country to well over 200,000.
The Israeli government has said that returning about 70,000 Israeli evacuees to their homes is a war aim.
Fear that the fighting will spread
Hezbollah has fired lots of of rockets and missiles at targets in Israel, including Tel Aviv. The group said it fired rockets on Friday into the northern Israeli city of Safed, where a lady was being treated for minor injuries.
Israel's air defense systems have ensured that damage has been minimal up to now.
Iran, which said Friday's attack crossed “red lines,” accused Israel of using U.S.-made “bunker-busting” bombs.
The tightening sparked concerns on the United Nations, where the annual General Assembly met this week, including from France, which joined the United States in proposing a 21-day ceasefire.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference in New York: “We believe the path forward is through diplomacy, not conflict… We will continue to work intentionally with all parties to urge them to choose this course.”
Hezbollah opened the newest battle in a decades-long conflict with a rocket fire against Israel immediately after the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza attacked Israel on October 7 last 12 months.
image credit : www.cnbc.com