Israel struck a residential building in Beirut on Monday, killing three members of a Palestinian armed group in the first strike on the city centre since Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza began nearly a year ago. In recent days, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon, striking at regional allies of Iran. On Friday, strikes on Hezbollah targets killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed group.
Strikes on Beirut’s centre
On Monday, a drone attacked “a flat belonging to the Lebanese Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya,” a security source said.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular leftist group, said three of its members were killed in a strike Monday on Beirut’s Kola neighbourhood. The group said in a statement that its military security chief Mohammad Abdel-Aal, military commander Imad Odeh and Abdelrahman Abdel-Aal were killed.
The Israeli military said it carried out fresh strikes on Monday against dozens of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon’s Bekaa region.
Israel “will continue powerful attacks, damage and destroy Hezbollah’s military capabilities and infrastructure in Lebanon,” the army said in a statement published on Telegram. Television footage showed the partially demolished floor of the targeted building in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Kola, near the road linking the capital to Beirut airport.
Agence France-Presse journalists also reported drones flying over the Lebanese capital throughout Sunday.
Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon since September 23, the deadliest day since the 1975-1990 civil war. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Israeli strikes killed at least 105 people and injured 359 others on Sunday.
Israeli bombings have killed more than 700 people in the past week, including 14 paramedics in two days, the ministry said. UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said “more than 200,000 people have been displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Syria.
Assassination of Hamas chief in Lebanon
The head of the Palestinian Hamas movement’s headquarters in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, has also been killed in an Israeli airstrike, the group’s press office said. The strike allegedly hit his home in a Palestinian refugee camp near the Lebanese city of Tyre. Along with him in the house were his wife, son and daughter. According to Hamas, they were all killed.
Demonstrations in support of Lebanon across US
In US cities this week, a sea of Palestinian flags was joined by Lebanese flags as demonstrators gathered to show their support for the latest victim of indiscriminate Israeli attacks.
On Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, several hundred demonstrators gathered in front of the city’s Federal Building, with activists giving speeches, people chanting and drawing chalk drawings in support of Gaza and Lebanon. Laila Ali with the Palestinian Youth Movement told The New Arab:
We gathered here today in front of the Federal Building because of Israel’s escalation in Lebanon. And it’s following up to about a year of genocide in Gaza. We are here to demand an arms embargo and to prevent this escalation into a full-out regional war.
She also continued:
I think with this past year how Israel has been able to act with impunity without any sort of reprimand from the West, with a green light to keep going, they have decided to continue and expand their war, to expand their genocide, to expand their attacks against Arab people.
