Israeli attacks will destroy residential buildings outside Beirut when French Macron “reduces unacceptable ‘unacceptable’ strikes.
Israel carried out an air strike for the first time in Lebanon’s capital since a fragile ceasefire between Israeli forces and the armed group Hezbollah, a Lebanese army, stopped two wars in November.
Residents fled when the building flattened in the Hadas district, a southern suburb of Beirut on Friday, when Israel took four strikes.
“We are near the buildings attacked by Israel, and are completely destroyed here,” reported Ali Hashem of Al Jazeera. “It was a residential block where many families lived, and many of them saw the building because Israeli war planes destroyed it.”
Hashem said nearby apartments and shops were damaged in the attack.
Israeli military said the target was Hezbollah military storage facility for drones.
Israel launched an attack after the Rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israeli territory. Hezbollah denied both times and no other groups claimed responsibility.
According to a statement from his office, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam quickly identified and arrested the Lebanese army the rocket’s chief and said it would “threate Lebanon’s stability and safety.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Lebanese government is directly responsible for the rocket fire, saying that as long as there was no peace in northern Israel, “there will not be peace in Beirut either.”
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fires for more than a year after Lebanese armed groups began firing rockets towards northern Israel after they said they were in solidarity with Hamas in the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023. The exchange of fires lasted several months until Israel escalated the conflict dramatically in September, killing many of the Hezbollah leaders before the two parties signed a ceasefire on November 27th.
According to a contract with US-French intermediaries, Israel should have pulled out its troops from southern Lebanon, but failed to pull soldiers from five Lebanon locations. Hezbollah agreed to move fighter jets and weapons north of the Ritani River to bring southern Lebanon under the sole military control of the Lebanese army.
Macron criticizes Israel’s strike
Speaking in Paris, Lebanon President Joseph Oun said the strike on the outskirts of Beirut were “continuation of the “violation of the Israeli agreement” sponsored by France and the United States.
At a joint press conference with AON, French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack “unacceptable” and pledged to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump.
The United Nations special coordinator at Lebanon Janine Hennis Pluschart said the escalation created “a critical time for Lebanon and the wider region.”
Israel has promised a strong response to any threat to security, prompting fear that last year’s war (which expelled more than 1.3 million people in Lebanon and destroyed much of the South) could resume.
Political analyst Yossi Beilin told Al Jazeera: “The fact that Israel responded for the first time in Beirut is a very relevant and consequential ceasefire.”
“This is the time and place where Americans and French people end the current situation,” Bailin said. “Hezbollah is not Lebanon,” but it is “an independent militia and that’s the difficulties we face here,” he said.
Israel on Friday launched an attack in the town of Kahru Tibnit in southern Lebanon, killing three people and 18 people, including children and women, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
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