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ShareBEIRUT/JERUSALEM/MANILA: A Zionist air strike targeted a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Tuesday in what the Zionist military said was retaliation for a cross-border rocket attack three days before that killed 12 children and teenagers.
A loud blast was heard and a plume of smoke could be seen rising above the southern suburbs — a stronghold of the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah — at around 7:40 p.m. (1640 GMT), a Reuters witness said. A senior Lebanese security source said a senior Hezbollah commander had been the target of the air strike and his fate remained unclear at the time of publication.
Lebanon’s state-run national news agency said a Zionist air strike had targeted the area around Hezbollah’s Shura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of the capital. Beirut has been on edge for days ahead of an anticipated Zionist attack in reprisal for the rocket strike on the Zionist-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday that killed the 12 youngsters in a football field in a Druze village. Hezbollah has denied involvement in that attack.
In a statement, the Zionist military said it had conducted “a targeted strike in Beirut on the commander responsible for the murder of the children in Majdal Shams and the killing of numerous additional (Zionist) civilians”. Details would follow. Earlier on Tuesday, more rocket fire from south Lebanon killed a civilian in a kibbutz in the north of the entity, medics said.
Shortly before the explosion in south Beirut, the Zionist military said 15 projectiles had been fired across the Lebanese border within the past few hours, with impacts in parts of the Upper Galilee region. No injuries were reported. The entity’s air force had just hit a Hezbollah observation post and “terror infrastructure” in south Lebanon, it added.
Concerns about escalation As diplomats sought to contain the fallout, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he did not believe a fight was inevitable between Hezbollah and the Zionist entity, though he remained concerned about the potential for escalation.
Druze reject retaliation
Hours before the strike, Druze residents of the Zionist-annexed Golan Heights had distanced themselves from Zionist threats to retaliate against Hezbollah.
Most of Majdal Shams’s around 11,000 residents still identify as Syrian more than half a century after the Zionist entity seized the Golan Heights from Syria and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community.
On a visit to the town on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed the Zionist entity would deliver a “severe response” to the strike, which killed 12 children aged between 10 and 16 as they played football on Saturday. Scores of Majdal Shams residents had come out to protest Netanyahu’s visit, many donning traditional Druze caps.
In a statement issued after his visit, Druze lay and religious leaders said the community rejects the “attempt to exploit the name of Majdal Shams as a political platform at the expense of the blood of our children”. Noting that the Druze faith “forbids killing and revenge in any form”, the community leaders said “we reject the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children”.
‘Who will we strike?’
An AFP journalist reported that a semblance of normality had returned to Majdal Shams on Tuesday, with shops open and residents walking on the streets. But the Druze leaders and residents said the whole community was still reeling from the children’s deaths. “The tragedy is immense, the impact is painful and the loss is shared by every household in the Golan,” they said.
A paramedic from Majdal Shams, Nabih Abu Saleh, told AFP: “The town is in a state of mourning that may last for a week. “We can’t look into each other’s eyes, because tears will flow,” he added. Saleh said his community was “against any (Zionist) response”, and asked: “Who will we strike? Our people in Syria and Lebanon?” — Agencies
