In central Beirut, residents, some weeping, were checking their homes and asking for news of neighbours, after a strike on Thursday that appeared to target Hezbollah’s security chief killed 22 people.
“The head of Hezbollah’s security apparatus, Wafiq Safa, was targeted,” a source close to Hezbollah told AFP on Friday, requesting anonymity to discuss the matter.
Safa was close to Hezbollah’s late leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike on south Beirut last month.
But people in the neighbourhood were stunned by the ferocity of the strike.
“There are a lot of families living here”, many displaced from south Lebanon and who have relatives in the neighbourhood, said Bilal Othman.
“Do they (Israel) want to tell us there is no safe place left in this country?”
PROMISED RETALIATION
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, following the Oct 7, 2023, attack, the worst in Israel’s history.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages seized by militants on Oct 7.
More recently, with Hamas weakened but not crushed in Gaza, Netanyahu promised to secure Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, in order to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes by Hezbollah’s cross-border fire to return.
With Lebanon deep in political and economic crisis for years, the power and influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah has become ever more entrenched in the Mediterranean country.
A stark symbol of the failure of Lebanese institutions to maintain even a semblance of rule of law was the Beirut port explosion of 2020, which killed more than 200 people and for which there has been no justice to date.
Israel has also promised to retaliate against Iran’s missile attack last week, which Tehran had said was vengeance for the assassination of two of its closest allies, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, along with an Iranian general.
Iran’s permanent representative to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, told the UN Security Council that his country was “fully prepared to defend its sovereignty” if attacked.
Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities and opposes striking oil installations.
“I don’t think we are currently in a situation that the two countries are seeking an all-out direct war,” Hamid, a 29-year-old university student in Tehran, told AFP.
“It will have severe economic and military consequences” for both countries, he added.
