Residents described a scene of flattened buildings and destroyed vehicles after Israel unleashed strikes targeting Hezbollah’s leader outside the Lebanese capital.
When Israel unleashed deadly strikes on residential buildings south of Beirut late Friday in an attempt to target Hezbollah’s leader, the deafening explosions rattled the entire neighborhood, said Rabia Ali, a Syrian refugee and mother of three, and left her children “shaking with fear.”
“They were loud, loud,” she said of the blasts.
Standing on a road near the strike site afterward, Ms. Ali said that she, her children and a cousin had fled the home where they had been staying — though they did not have anywhere to go.
At least two people were killed and 76 others wounded in the strikes, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Videos and photos verified and geolocated by The Times showed at least two seven-story apartment buildings were flattened and vehicles destroyed. Craters were left in the street, about 700 feet away from the collapsed buildings.
The health minister, Dr. Firass Abiad, had said earlier that most people were still trapped under the rubble, and the toll was expected to rise.
He said the Israeli strikes had caused a “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings. “They are residential buildings — they were filled with people,” Dr. Abiad told The New York Times. “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.”
