An aid worker in Beirut described “total chaos” in Lebanon’s capital, with bombs raining down over the city, striking what she described as civilian areas with “no warning.”
“These are not targeted attacks,” Dr. Tania Baban, the Lebanon country director for the Chicago-based nonprofit MedGlobal, told NBC News in a voice note, describing dozens of strikes across the city. She said her ears were “still ringing” after a building right by hers was hit.
The timing of Israel’s surge affirmed what Israel’s leadership had made clear Tuesday night in public statements and diplomacy: That Israel remains determined to degrade Hezbollah even as it allows the U.S. to lead it into talks with Iran, the Lebanese militant group’s patron state.
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Video shows strike in Lebanon as Israel launches attacks
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The Israeli airstrikes came only a few hours after a statement from Israel’s prime minister’s office rejected an earlier announcement by Pakistani Prime MinisterShehbaz Sharif that the ceasefire deal would include Lebanon.
The Israeli military said their airstrikes hit one hundred “terror targets” within ten minutes, striking Hezbollah headquarters, military arrays and command-and-control centers, the IDF said. The IDF “eliminated” more than 40 Hezbollah militants, said IDF International Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani.
The strikes were the “result of meticulous planning over weeks,” Shoshani said.
In statements on Wednesday, the IDF implied that its attacks may expand further into northern Beirut, which has not historically been associated with Hezbollah or its mostly Shiite Muslim supporters.
“The Hezbollah terrorist organization concentrated its forces in northern Beirut,” the IDF said. “For years, Hezbollah has used the civilian population as human shields, and it has now begun using non-Shiite civilian populations as well.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday told PBS that Lebanon had not been included in the ceasefire deal “because of Hezbollah” but that will “get taken care of.”
Meanwhile, Lebanese government officials and Hezbollah both sought to assure the public that Lebanon would soon be included in the broader regional treaty.
Hezbollah said it was on the “threshold of a major historic victory” and warned displaced families to wait for a formal ceasefire.
Hezbollah first fired projectiles over Lebanon’s southern border with Israel in early March, days after Israel and the United States began their offensive against Iran. That act of solidarity thrust all of Lebanon into another grinding conflict with Israel less than a year and a half after the U.S. negotiated a ceasefire for Israel’s previous offensive against Hezbollah.
Israel is weeks into a sprawling ground invasion of Lebanon. Israeli evacuation orders for Lebanese civilians now cover about 15% of Lebanese territory, according to Reuters.
But for most Lebanese civilians, the renewed fighting has once made again cast them as unwilling participants in a regionwide conflict.
“Hopefully a ceasefire will be reached,” Ahmed Harm, a 54-year-old man displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, told the Reuters. “Lebanon can’t take it anymore. The country is collapsing economically, and everything is collapsing.”
