BEIRUT: Lebanon said an Israeli strike outside Beirut killed two people on Tuesday (Mar 24) after several strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs overnight as the Israel-Hezbollah conflict entered its fourth week.
AFP correspondents saw destruction to an apartment building in Bshamoun, a mixed town in the Aley region, located in the mountains the capital to the southeast, outside of Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.
Abbas Qassem, 55, who owns the apartment next to the one targeted, was weeping at the damage to his flat, which was not occupied at the time.
“There’s nothing left. It’s all burned or destroyed … No walls, the windows are gone, the facade is gone, all my hard work has been lost,” said Qassem, his wife also crying.
“What have I done to have my home destroyed? I’m just a normal person,” said Qassem, who works for the state telecoms provider.
The health ministry gave a preliminary toll of two dead and five wounded in the strike.
Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East war when Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Mar 2 to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel has since launched strikes across Lebanon, killing at least 1,039 people and displacing more than a million others, and sent ground troops into the country’s south.