The surge in violence persisted on Friday with Israeli airstrikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs and south Lebanon, as fierce fighting raged in southern villages between Hezbollah combatants and Israeli troops advancing deeper into Lebanese territory.
New evacuation warnings were issued by the Israeli army to residents of Hadath, Ghobeiri and Haret Hreik, Galerie Semaan and Bir el-Abed areas of the southern suburbs on Friday afternoon.
A wave of relentless raids followed shortly, causing massive fire and destruction, and razing several buildings to the ground.
The warnings caused panic in the nearby City Center shopping complex, which was evacuated immediately. Video rushes showed panic-stricken shoppers rushing out of the complex in a chaotic way.
At the same time, the Lebanese army blocked the Galerie Semaan Road, having identified an unexploded missile that had targeted a building in the area.
The Israeli army subsequently announced, via its Arabic-speaking spokesman Avichay Adraee, that it had targeted Hezbollah command headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Amid the chaotic situation, an incident broke out in the adjacent and mainly-Christian inhabited Aïn el-Remmaneh neighorhood when Shiite youths from Chiyah entered the area and fired shots to intimidate the inhabitants. This act provoked the anger of Aïn el-Remmaneh’s residents who clashed with the armed intruders and expelled them, causing great tension in the area. Local officials immediately intervened and dispersed the crowd.
Lebanese Forces MP and former minister Pierre Bou Assi, inspected the scene and called on Hezbollah leaders to keep their followers “away from residential areas” to avoid “endangering people’s lives.”
South Lebanon
In south Lebanon, a raid targeted the village of Ketrani in the Jezzine caza, killing three people and wounding three others.
A targeted drone strike on a motorcycle in Nabatiyeh el-Faouka killed one person, while another drone strike on a vehicle in Toura killed two. In addition, one person was killed in drone attacks in Kfarmelki.
At the same time, three raids hit the Hoch area in Tyre. These strikes, as well as others in the Tyre caza, were claimed by the Israeli army on Platform X, announcing that it had destroyed targets affiliated to Hezbollah's Aziz unit. These included “command headquarters, intelligence infrastructure, weapons depots, observation posts and military buildings”.
The Israeli army also blew up residential buildings in the village of Tayr Harfa, as part of an apparent scorched earth strategy that it is following in the border villages.
https://x.com/ThisIsBeirut_/status/1860029299103006918
In parallel, Hezbollah continues to step up its strikes against Israeli targets. In a series of communiques the Iran-backed group claimed that it had targeted the Israeli Air Force technical college east of Haifa, the Israeli early-warning site on the summit of Mount Hermon in the Syrian Golan, and the Ramot Naftali settlement in Upper Galilee.
In the field, fierce fighting took place with Israeli soldiers in border villages in southern Lebanon, with Hezbollah claiming responsibility for firing a guided missile at an Israeli Merkava tank in Khiam, and for firing artillery shells and rockets at a deployment of Israeli soldiers in Deir Mimas, Kfar Kila and Chamaa.
For its part, the Israeli army announced that it has lost 83 soldiers since the start of ground operations in Lebanon.
Israel's Channel 12 reported 15 rockets fired from Lebanon towards northern Israel, while the daily Maariv reported that a factory in Naharia was targeted by a salvo of rockets from Lebanon.
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