This weekend Israeli forces have been pounding Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s Dahieh neighborhood, a terrorist stronghold.
One of the airstrikes was aimed at eliminating Hezbollah’s acting chief of staff, Muhammad Haydar (Abu Ali Haydar), Israeli media reported. Haydar as served in the past as Hezbollah parliamentarian and was considered close to assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He has also been linked to the terror organization’s Jihad Council, Hezbollah’s highest military authority.
Haydar’s status is unknown.
The IAF struck several Hezbollah command centers, and additional terrorist infrastructure during the day on Saturday. Three waves of airstrikes were carried out in Dahieh.
“Hezbollah deliberately embedded its infrastructure in these civilian areas, using the Lebanese civilian population as a human shield,” the IDF said.
Over the past week, the IAF struck dozens of Hezbollah command centers, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure sites in Dahieh.
As with most of the attacks, numerous steps were taken prior to the strikes to mitigate harm to civilians, including collecting prior intelligence, leveraging aerial surveillance, and issuing advance warnings to the civilian population in the area.
The strikes are part of the IDF’s ongoing efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel and to dismantle the weapons production and storage facilities that Hezbollah established over the years in the Dahieh area, the IDF said.
According to Lebanese media, two buildings were completely destroyed in the strikes – an 8-story building and a 4-story building — with 35 people in the larger building and 12 people in the smaller building — in addition to 10 other buildings near the site that became “uninhabitable.”
Five bunker-buster bombs were reportedly dropped in the attack, which killed at least 16 people and wounded 70 others, Lebanese media reported.
Other international media reported at least 11 dead and 63 wounded.
Hezbollah parliamentarian Amin Sherri meanwhile told reporters there were “no persons from Hezbollah in the building that was attacked tonight in the center of Beirut.”
