At least three people were killed and seven injured on Tuesday when Israeli warplanes hit a southern Beirut suburb for the second time in four days, endangering Israel and Hezbollah’s fragile four-month cease-fire.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, all of the casualties occurred in the Dahieh district of southern Beirut, a bastion of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The hit in the middle of the night caused a structure to collapse, and unlike Friday’s airstrike in response to rockets fired into Israel, in which the Israeli military issued an evacuation order ahead of time, no warning was given prior to the attack.
Israel Defense Forces said on its official account on Telegram that the strike targeted a Hezbollah commander whom it said had “recently directed and assisted Hamas operatives in the planning of a significant terror attack against Israeli civilians.”
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun rejected Israel’s claim.
An Israeli airstrike Friday destroyed a building in a densely populated residential and commercial area of Dahieh with two schools in the vicinity. Israel said it was targeting a drone storage facility belonging to Hezbollah’s aerial unit.
There were no casualties but the Lebanese Ministry of Health said three people, including one woman, were killed and 18 injured, mostly women and children, in a strike on a village in southern Lebanon, one of several areas targeted in an Israeli aerial assault.
Israel said the airstrikes and artillery fire were retaliation for two rockets fired across the border toward Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding area in northern Israel.
Hezbollah denied any responsibility for the rocket fire saying it was fully committed to the cease-fire deal with Israel in which it agreed to end a 14-month campaign of cross-border attacks on Israel in support of besieged Gaza and pullback north of the Litani River in return for Israel forces withdrawing from southern Lebanon.
