Israel has extended its bombing to Lebanon to root out Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militia allied to Iran that has been a dominant faction in Lebanese politics since the 1980s and part of a wider, but now weakened, “axis of resistance”. Hezbollah fired on Israel this week to avenge the death of Khamenei.
Explosions lit up the night sky over Beirut’s southern suburbs. The Israeli military said it carried out 26 waves of strikes. The southern section of Beirut, where Israel ordered evacuation,s is home to hundreds of thousands of people. During the previous campaign,s it had ordered only smaller evacuations of specific areas.
“We’re sleeping here in the streets – some in cars, some on the street, some on the beach,” said Jamal Seifeddin, 43, who fled Beirut’s southern suburbs and spent the night on the streets in the capital’s downtown district. “No one even brought a blanket.”
Israel has intervened in Lebanon repeatedly over decades, most recently in a campaign that weakened Hezbollah in 2024. But the ferocity of Friday’s strikes had little precedent even in the long history of war in the Lebanese capital.
Inside Israel, explosions could be heard as Israeli defences activated to shoot down incoming Iranian fire. The UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia all reported fresh drone and missile