BEIRUT: Israeli air attacks battered the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday, in the most intense bombardment since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Hezbollah last month.

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

It was the single biggest attack by Israel 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.

Smoke clouds hang over city as Lebanese capital experiences ‘heaviest bombing so far’ on Sunday

“Last night was the most violence 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 showed fresh damage to the highway that runs from Beirut airport through its southern suburbs into downtown.

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 Hezbollah 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 on the eve of the Oct 7 Hamas raid on southern Israel, which prompted Israel’s belligerent campaign on Gaza and other parts of the Middle East, including Lebanon.

More than 2,000 people have been killed 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 23 people had been killed the previous day.

The United Nations’ refugee chief said on Sunday that there were “many instances” where Israeli airstrikes had violated international law by hitting civilian infrastructure and killing civilians in Lebanon.

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi warned on Sunday that civilians in Lebanon were caught in the crossfire as Israel’s intensified bombardment campaign forced many to flee while others were trapped under fire.

“You have a humanitarian challenge due to displacement, but also a humanitarian challenge, and I would say human rights challenges due to the impossibility of being displaced,” he said.

Ivo Friesen, the head of the UNCHR in Lebanon said “There are still 6,000 refugees known to us, Syrian refugees in the south who were not able to move due to insecurity, and they don’t know where to go, and now it’s too late”.

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

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

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

Israel continues to bomb 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 blow to the group and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in recent weeks, have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2024