Elbahrain.net What little sense of security remaining in the Lebanese capital appeared to be destroyed as Israel attacked the heart of Beirut early on Thursday morning.
Israel has been pounding Beirut’s southern suburbs, which are home to Hezbollah, for about a week now. However, this attack in a Shia neighborhood close to the parliament building—a section of the city that has been spared since Israel’s battle with Iran in 2006—suggested that Israel’s campaign would be rapidly growing in breadth.
People were startled out of sleep by the missile’s smash and boom, and windows all along the skyline lit up. People in the capital panickedly called their loved ones, trying to figure out where Israel’s bombs had fallen this time, as a thick column of smoke ascended from the center of the city.
According to the health ministry and the Islamic Health Authority itself, the attack destroyed an office of the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Authority in the central Bashura area, killing nine persons, including seven medical professionals.
People were walking in a stupor on the street where the strike had an impact. Women carried babies in their arms, as they navigated through the debris. In contrast to the southern suburbs and other regions of the nation, this neighborhood, which is predominantly Shia-majority, received no evacuation orders.
The massive Mohammad al-Amin mosque, located along the street, is a symbol of the approximately one million people who have been forced to flee their homes due to Israel’s air campaign in Lebanon, which started last Monday.
Families poured into the mosque’s grounds on Thursday as they fled the central Beirut strike. Many of the people who had already been camping out there were packing up their possessions to go home just as they arrived.
The recently uprooted were displacing the previously homeless, who were now heading north of the city in search of safer grounds.
“The entire mosque trembled. People fled, fearing that they might be bombarded, according to Fatima, a middle-aged woman. Sitting against a column, she was on a cardboard box that had been folded up. “And others arrived just as they ran away.”
Had I not been so ill, I would have also departed. However, I lack the energy to be moved again.
Amid the rising colonnades of the mosque, the Mostafa family from the suburbs of southern Beirut divides three mattresses amongst themselves. Mostafa Mostafa remarked, “I can not afford to leave this place.” Is not it unfortunate what has transpired? We had a roof over our heads and were a proud Lebanese family. We felt dignified in our home. Now observe our current situation.
Concerns about mission creep
Around 1,300 people have died as a result of Israel’s attack in Lebanon since it started on September 17, according to a CNN count of comments from Lebanon’s health ministry. According to Israel’s war council, the goal was to return 60,000 residents who had been displaced in the northernmost region of the nation by Hezbollah’s rocket fire. Hezbollah for its part stated it would only agree to a ceasefire on the Israel-Lebanon border when the Israeli offensive in Gaza finishes.
Israel claims that Hezbollah’s general infrastructure, command and control centers, and weapons stockpiles have all been hit by Israeli strikes. Nonetheless, the health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, believes that a large number of those murdered were civilians. According to a CNN expert on air warfare, the intensity of the attack in Lebanon has already surpassed that in Gaza, where a combined ground, air, and naval assault destroyed a significant portion of the beleaguered strip.
It is possible that this battle has reached yet another risky turning point. Israel has started its ground battle and gathered troops along the border. People have been forced to evacuate as a result of the Israeli military’s barrage of artillery and drone strikes, which are intended to create a buffer zone and open the door for an invasion of the southern region of the nation.
Later in the afternoon, the media center expanded the purported objectives of destroying the arsenal and command and control systems of the Iran-backed militia.
It has sparked concerns about mission creep and forced the nation—which is accustomed to conflict and crises—into unknown territory.
As of right now, we are immobilized. We cannot do anything,” said Mahdi, an alumnus of the American University of Beirut, a five minute drive from the location of the attack on the Islamic Health Authority.
Mahdi was working around his former campus after fleeing his suburban home in southern Beirut to west Beirut. He went on, “We have no idea what our futures hold.”
“They are getting scarier since it feels like things are getting worse every day and we do not really know what region is safe anymore,” medical student Hadeel said of the nearly 200-year-old university founded by American missionaries.
“Is it going to continue? Will the West take a stand, or are we merely another Middle Eastern nation?
