Video: Israel Bombs Hezbollah Weapons Depot In Beirut's Civilian Area, Probes Hadera Stabbings As Terror Attack

The Israel Air Force carried out multiple precision airstrikes on Hezbollah weapons depots and intelligence centres located in the Dahieh district of Beirut in Lebanon according to a report by the IDF on Wednesday.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) shared a video of the airstrikes and pointed out how the weapons depots were located within civilian infrastructure.

The video showed the weapons depots were located near a school, university, gas station and two mosques and were surrounded by residential buildings.

“Take a look at how close a weapons production facility was next to civilian infrastructure in the Dahieh area. Overnight, we conducted a precise, targeted strike on this facility as well as a Hezbollah intelligence headquarters in the area. This is why we must operate in the Dahieh area,” the IDF said, and shared a video of the strikes with a caption in Hebrew language.

Israel said its air defences intercepted two projectiles fired towards Caesarea and reported the destruction of more than “100 Hezbollah terror targets” in the past 24 hours.

It also said that two people were killed Wednesday in a rocket attack on the northern city of Kiryat Shmona.

Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces exchanged fire along the Lebanon-Israel border on Wednesday, ahead of expected talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden.

Hezbollah said its fighters were locked in clashes with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, using rocket-propelled weapons to repel Israeli attempts to breach the border.

Having weakened Hamas, whose unprecedented October 2023 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza, the Israeli military is now focused on Hezbollah, the Lebanese ally of the Palestinian Islamist group.

Hezbollah has been launching rockets against Israel for a year in parallel with the Gaza war and is now fighting it in clashes that are spreading along Lebanon’s mountainous frontier with Israel.

The escalation in Lebanon, after a year of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has raised fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could suck in Iran and Israel’s superpower ally the United States.

In recent weeks Israel has carried out a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and launched ground operations into southern Lebanon that expanded further this week.

Israel has said that troops from as many as four divisions have operated inside Lebanon since the first announcement of the ground operation on Oct. 1. It has not confirmed that they have established a permanent presence there.

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the last two weeks, and forced 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has no choice but to strike Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they fled under Hezbollah rocket fire.

Hadera Stabbing Attack

At least six people were wounded, two of them seriously, in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Hadera on Wednesday, Israeli authorities said.

“The terrorist has been neutralised,” police said in a statement. “Four separate locations have been identified, resulting in six victims with stab wounds,” it further said, describing it as a “terrorist attack”.

The attack comes more than a week after seven people were killed in a shooting and stabbing claimed by Hamas in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

Fresh Gaza Strikes

At least 45 people were killed in Israeli military strikes on Gaza in the past 24 hours, Palestinian medics said on Wednesday, as Israeli forces pressed on with a raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in the enclave’s north.

The Israeli military says the raid, now in its fifth day, is intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabalia and to prevent them regrouping.

It has repeatedly issued evacuation orders to residents of Jabalia and nearby areas, but Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe places to flee to in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had received unconfirmed reports that dozens of Palestinians may have been killed in Jabalia and other areas of northern Gaza, but is unable to reach them because of Israeli bombardments.

The Gaza health ministry said the army had ordered three hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate. Hundreds of patients and medics were trapped inside those facilities, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Hamas exiled official Izzat El-Reshiq said in a statement Israel’s escalation in northern Gaza aimed to punish residents for refusing to leave their homes.

Israel began its offensive against Hamas in Gaza after fighters from the Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, the Gaza health ministry says. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the enclave has been laid to waste.