‘Most violent night’: Massive Israeli bombardments shake Lebanon’s capital

Massive explosions have rocked the Lebanese capital, marking the “most violent night” of attacks since Israel expanded its military offensive against Lebanon on September 23.
Israeli warplanes carried out more than 30 overnight air raids on southern suburbs of Beirut, with a huge fireball lighting up the night sky and plumes of smoke rising early on Sunday.
After a devastating yearlong war in Gaza, Israel has now shifted its focus northwards to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based group allied with the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, Hamas.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said a Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut was hit by more than 30 strikes, which were heard across the city. The targets included a petrol station and a hotel near the city’s Rafic Hariri international airport.
The number of casualties from the latest Israeli strikes could not be immediately determined.
Israel’s military said it “conducted a series of strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities” and infrastructure, stressing “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Beirut, said the city experienced a different level of “intensity, velocity and weight” of explosions, with the strikes centred in an area near the airport.
“Day after day, the level of the intensity of the bombardment is ascending. It is becoming another Gaza with the way the Israeli strikes are hitting,” he said.
More massive explosions were also seen mid-morning on Sunday, according to our correspondent.
Hashem said thousands of residents continue to pour into Beirut’s city centre as they try to escape the bombardments in their southern neighbourhoods.
“There are so many people sheltering on the streets, thousands of them, in the beach, the parks and tens of thousands in schools,” he added. “The [Lebanese] government is unable to deal with this situation.”
The overnight strikes came hours after a Lebanese security source told Al Jazeera that Hezbollah had lost contact with one of its senior leaders, Hashem Safieddine, who was seen as a possible successor to slain leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Safieddine, chairman of Hezbollah’s executive council, is also a cousin of Nasrallah, who was killed in an intense Israeli strike on Beirut on September 27.
Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine so far.

But in response to the latest attacks, the Lebanese armed group launched retaliatory strikes, firing three salvoes of rockets and missiles at Israeli soldiers in Manara in northern Israel.
The group also claimed attacks on Israeli troops who tried to infiltrate Lebanon through Khallet Shuaib in Blida area, forcing the Israeli troops to retreat.
Israeli authorities on Saturday said at least nine Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon so far as it expands its operations in the country.
On Saturday, it made its first strike in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, killing Saeed Attallah Ali, a senior leader of Hamas’s armed wing Qassam Brigades, alongside his wife and their two daughters.