Beirut [Lebanon], March 8 (ANI): Lebanon said on Sunday that Israeli overnight airstrikes on its capital, Beirut, and locations in southern Lebanon killed at least 15 people and wounded another 15, the country’s National News Agency reported. The report added that U.S.-designated terror group Hezbollah has announced retaliatory attacks against Israeli targets.
Meanwhile, LBCI Lebanon News, a leading television station and news website in Beirut, reported, citing sources, that a Russian aircraft departed from Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport shortly after midnight between Saturday and Sunday carrying 117 Iranian nationals. The report said the flight also transported the bodies of five members of an Iranian family.
The National News Agency cited a statement by Lebanon’s Health Ministry detailing that Israeli strikes had targeted several locations across the country. These included a hotel in Beirut, where four people were killed, and the towns of Jabal al-Batoum and Kafr Rumman, where five people were killed.
An Al Jazeera report stated that the area along the Mediterranean coast is home to dozens of hotels now overcrowded with displaced people who fled their homes elsewhere in Lebanon due to the ongoing fighting. The targeted hotel was also housing displaced people fleeing the war in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, and some were seen leaving the building for fear of further airstrikes.
In a statement cited by the National News Agency, the Iran-backed Hezbollah said its fighters targeted a concentration of Israeli soldiers at the Al-Malikiya military site. The attack reportedly involved a volley of rockets fired toward the position across from the Lebanese border town of Aitaroun.
Hezbollah wields significant power in Lebanon, where it operates as both a Shia Muslim political party and a militant group. The United States has designated the group as a terrorist organization.
In a separate statement, Hezbollah said it also launched what it described as a swarm of “kamikaze drones” targeting the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona. The statement added that the strike came as part of a warning it had previously issued to residents of the city.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on Sunday claimed strikes on key commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force operating in Lebanon amid escalating conflict in the region over the past week. In a post on X, the IDF said the strike targeted key commanders in the Quds Force’s Lebanon Corps who were operating in Beirut. The military said the commanders had been involved in advancing attacks against Israel while also working on behalf of the Iranian military establishment.
A National News Agency correspondent in Nabatieh, one of the nine governorates of Lebanon, reported significant damage to the government serail in Tebnine after the latest Israeli airstrikes on the town. According to the report, the raids caused extensive destruction to the Tebnine Government Serail, which houses several official administrative offices.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Sunday that they had launched missiles toward the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Beersheba, as well as an airbase in Jordan.
According to an Al Jazeera report, an Iranian drone attack caused material damage to a water desalination plant in Bahrain, the country’s Interior Ministry said. The development comes a day after Iran said the United States bombed a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island in southern Iran, setting what it described as a “precedent.”
Iraqi news agency INA also reported that the IRGC had targeted the Al-Adairi base in Kuwait with drones and missiles. The report said the strike destroyed the base’s command building and precisely hit helicopter maintenance and supply centers, as well as aircraft fuel tanks.
The Israeli military said it had identified missiles launched from Iran and that defense systems were working to intercept the threat. “The Israeli Air Force, with the guidance of IDF intelligence, struck a number of fuel storage facilities in Tehran a short while ago,” the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement, adding that the attacked fuel depots were used by the Armed Forces of Iran in Tehran. (ANI)
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