The Israeli military on Sunday afternoon struck a residential neighbourhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in an area that is a stronghold of the militant group Hezbollah.

In a joint statement following the strike, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense minister Israel Katz said the military had targeted infrastructure in the Dahiya, where Hezbollah holds sway. Israel said the Iranian-backed group was storing precision missiles there. “Israel will not allow Hezbollah to grow stronger and pose any threat to it — anywhere in Lebanon,” Netanyahu and Katz said.

“The Dahiya district in Beirut will not serve as a sanctuary city for the terrorist organization Hezbollah.” They said that “the Lebanese government bears direct responsibility for preventing these threats.”

Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, said on Lebanese state media that Israel was undermining stability and warned that its actions would “escalate tensions and pose real threats to the region’s security.” He called on France and the US, which are helping oversee a ceasefire that largely ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in November, to “assume their responsibilities and compel Israel to immediately cease its attacks.”

Aoun said, “The ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are unacceptable under any pretext.”

Videos on social media and on regional news media showed a large cloud of smoke billowing upward from the area after the strikes.

Al-Manar, a Lebanese news site affiliated with Hezbollah, said that the
attack caused “significant damage” to the surrounding area. The Israeli military said that its air force had struck a weapons storage site.

New York Times News Service