Thick smoke billows over buildings following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut's southern suburbs on October 19, 2024. Photo: AFP
Israeli airstrikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut on Saturday, Lebanese state media reported, shortly after Israel ordered residents to evacuate, marking the first attacks in three days on Hezbollah's main stronghold. AFP footage showed plumes of smoke rising over the area, less than an hour after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order. Lebanon's official National News Agency reported two Israeli strikes on the same building in the neighbourhood of Haret Hreik, and later added that "Israeli warplanes" had struck the Al-Umara neighbourhood in nearby Choueifat.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee issued an "urgent warning to residents of the southern suburb (of Dahiyeh), specifically those in... Haret Hreik neighbourhood". "You are located near facilities and interests belonging to Hezbollah, against which the IDF (Israeli military) will be operating in the near future," he wrote in Arabic on X. He later also issued warnings for the Burj al-Barajneh and Choueifat neighbourhoods.
On September 23, Israel launched an intense air campaign on Lebanon and later sent in ground forces after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group over the Gaza war. Since late September, the war has left at least 1,418 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
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