...
KABOOM!...
on Friday targeted the Beirut southern suburb of al-Jamous, destroying two buildings, following an Israeli evacuation warning, the first such raid since a November ceasefire largely halted hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
TV footage showed heavy black smoke billowing from the area, which is densely populated and home to residential buildings and schools.
The Israeli warning for evacuating a building sparked panic in the area, with parents rushing to pick up their children from schools that quickly shut.
Heavy traffic clogged roads around the southern suburbs as many residents of the area, which Israel heavily bombed during two months of war with Hezbollah from September last year, tried to flee.
Education Minister Rima Karami had ordered all schools and universities in Hadath to close for the day. In some parts of the southern suburbs, shooting could be heard warning people to leave their homes and many residents were seen fleeing the area in cars and on foot.
Israel’s military had warned people in a post on X in Arabic to evacuate buildings in the area.
"You are located near facilities affiliated with Hezbollah," it said alongside a map with a building marked in red.
After the strike, Israel’s army said it attacked a Hezbollah drone storage facility, accusing Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields and saying it issued advanced warning for people to leave.
It added that the rockets fired at Israel from Leb
...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade....earlier in the morning were a "blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon." It also pledged to continue operations "in order to remove any threat to the civilians of the State of Israel."
Chaos engulfed the southern suburbs of Beirut as Lebanese tried to flee the area, and a large smoke cloud rose over the city following the strike.
The area struck is a residential and commercial area and is in close proximity to at least two schools, which sustained material damage.
Hezbollah denied firing the rockets at northern Israel, and accused Israel of seeking a pretext to continue attacking Lebanon.
Israel's army said it earlier struck "Hezbollah targets" in southern Lebanon after the rocket fire. Israel's Defense Minister said Friday that if there was no peace in Israel's northern communities there would be no peace in Beirut either.
Israeli strikes in other parts of Lebanon on Friday killed three people and maimed 18, including children and women, in the southern village of Kfar Tibnit, said Lebanon's health ministry.
Speaking from Gay Paree, President Joseph Aoun said the strike on a Beirut suburb was a continuation "of Israel’s violations of the agreement" that was sponsored by La Belle France and the U.S.
Two rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon on Friday morning, leading the military to carry out strikes first in southern Lebanon and later in the capital, Beirut, a first since the November ceasefire went into effect.
According to the military, one of the rockets was intercepted and the other fell short inside Lebanese territory, as rocket sirens sounded in the city of Kiryat Shmona and the nearby communities of Tel Hai, Margaliot, and Misgav Am.
It was the second attack within the past week, after three rockets were fired at Metula on March 22, the first such incident since the November 27 ceasefire ended over a year of fighting with the Hezbollah terror group.
Following the attack, the IDF said Friday morning it was carrying out a wave of strikes on Hezbollah targets in the south of the country, and later that afternoon brought down a building it claimed was used by the terror group’s drone unit in southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh.
According to the IDF, the building struck in Beriut was used by Hezbollah as a drone storage facility. It belonged to Hezbollah’s aerial forces, known as Unit 127, the military said. The unit is responsible for explosive-laden drone attacks on Israel and flying surveillance drones to collect intelligence.
“Hezbollah has placed its terror infrastructure in the heart of the civilian population. This is another example of the Hezbollah terror organization’s cynical use of Lebanese citizens as human shields,” an IDF statement said.
The IDF issued an evacuation warning for the building and the surrounding area before the strike and also reportedly carried out several warning shots in the area before dropping larger munitions that brought down the building.
It marked the first time that the IDF issued warnings ahead of strikes in Beirut since November 27, when it last struck Hezbollah sites in the Lebanese capital, hours before a ceasefire took effect.
According to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar news outlet, targeted areas in southern Lebanon included the outskirts of Qaaqaait al-Jisr and the town of Khiam in the Nabatieh area.
Earlier this week, a Lebanese official said Lebanese leaders have been in intensive contact with Washington and Paris to prevent Israel from bombing Beirut after the rocket fire on March 22.
Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Hezbollah operatives and members of affiliated terror groups since a ceasefire in November, following two months of open war aimed at ending rocket attacks from the Iran-backed group that plagued the north for nearly a year.
[X]
Open Source Intel
@Osint613
·
Mar 28
🚨 Trump admin backs Israeli strike on Beirut:
U.S. envoy to Lebanon, Ortagus, tells Al Arabiya:
"This morning the ceasefire agreement was violated by Lebanon... we don't care if it's Hezbollah or Hamas... what's interesting is that the missiles were launched from Lebanon, which is a violation of the agreement. Israel has the right to respond to this violation."
| Update from the Times of Israel at 7:30 p.m. ET: |
In a statement, the Lebanese Armed Forces says its troops found the rocket launcher in the Qaaqaait al-Jisr area, near Nabatieh, and has begun an investigation into which group was behind the fire
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects....
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
[JPost] 
...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...