Israel hits 20 sites in Beirut within 2 minutes, in major offensive ahead of truce
Extensive wave of strikes on Hezbollah assets comes hours before ceasefire is expected to be okayed
Israel launched a wave of simultaneous airstrikes Tuesday afternoon on 20 Hezbollah targets in the terror group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in southern Beirut, shortly before the security cabinet was set to convene and approve a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Additionally, the Israel Defense Forces said that for the first time in 24 years, its soldiers had reached a portion of the Litani River, where it runs relatively close to the border.
After issuing an unusually broad evacuation warning for 20 buildings in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a Hezbollah stronghold, the IDF said that within two minutes, it had struck all 20 sites.
The swift and extensive wave of airstrikes was carried out by eight fighter jets, according to the military.
Seven buildings targeted in the strikes were used by Hezbollah for the management and storage of funds, the IDF said, including headquarters, vaults and branches of the Al-Qard al-Hasan association, known to be used by the terror group as a quasi-bank.
The other 13 sites included a Hezbollah aerial forces center, an intelligence division command room, weapon depots, and other military infrastructure, the IDF said.
The military released footage showing the strikes.
Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office said he was approving “the continued IDF offensive operations on the northern front” during an assessment with the military’s top brass and other defense officials.
he meeting approving the battle plans was attended by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, head of the Operations Directorate Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, head of the Intelligence Directorate Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, head of the Strategy Directorate Maj. Gen. Eliezer Toledano, Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir, and head of the ministry’s Political-Military Bureau Dror Shalom.
A short while before the major wave of strikes, Lebanese media outlets reported an additional Israeli airstrike in central Beirut — outside the Hezbollah stronghold — without an evacuation warning being given, indicating the strike was an attempted assassination and not the regular targeting of Hezbollah infrastructure.
Later on Tuesday, in a warning to Lebanese civilians, Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, said the military would be striking numerous branches of the Al-Qard al-Hasan association.
“Iranian funding and Hezbollah’s independent sources of income are deposited at the association’s branches, and it is used in practice to manage and store the terror assets of the organization,” Adraee said.
The spokesman said the strikes “will be another blow to the Iranian financing chain of Hezbollah, which uses an association under a civilian guise to finance assets for the storage of weapons, the establishment of launch sites, the payment of wages to its terrorists and the build-up of its criminal terrorist organization, on the backs of the people of Lebanon.”
Earlier, in the late morning, the IDF said it had struck six buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs used by Hezbollah’s coast-to-sea missile unit and as command centers. In that case, too, evacuation warnings were issued for the sites.
The military said 26 airstrikes were conducted in Beirut on Tuesday, with the total for this week standing at 50.
According to the IDF, some 330 Hezbollah sites have been struck in Beirut’s southern suburbs since the beginning of the ongoing fighting. In the 2006 Second Lebanon War, for comparison, some 140 sites were struck.
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