'US sees no evidence of Hezbollah bunker under hospital,' US Defense Secretary says

BEIRUT — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin said on Wednesday that Washington had not seen information supporting Israeli claims that Hezbollah had set up a bunker complex under the hospital, the New York Times (NYT) reported Wednesday.

Austin told reporters at a news conference in Italy, “We’ll continue to collaborate with our Israeli counterparts to gain better fidelity on exactly what they’re looking at," according to the NYT. 

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The Sahel Hospital, located in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, was evacuated on Monday evening after the Israeli army said it was conducting "a reconnaissance of the complex" beneath which it said "hundreds of millions of dollars" belonging to Hezbollah were hidden.

Hezbollah has "hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold under the Sahel Hospital in Haret Hreik to fund its terrorist activities," Israeli army Arabic-speaking spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X. "We are revealing dangerous information about Hezbollah placing Hassan Nasrallah's private bunker under this hospital," he added.

According to him, "the entry and exit openings are located inside the Ahmadi building and the Sahel Center building." "In this bunker is a compound where hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold are kept, much of which was taken from Lebanese citizens and which would have allowed and could still allow the reconstruction of the state," he said. He also said that these funds are "exclusively intended for the arming of Hezbollah."

In a video posted on X, Adraee’s superior, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, partially walked back the claim, saying on Monday that the military “wasn’t planning to bomb the hospital.”

"The Israeli allegations about the Sahel hospital are false, but we were forced to evacuate," said MP Fadi Alameh (Amal), also the director of the health facility, in an interview with Al Jadeed TV. He also said that "the Sahel Hospital has nothing to do with the parties," and called on the army command to inspect it and ensure that there are no tunnels under the building.

Sahel Hospital invited local and international media to visit the facility to dispute Israel's claims that Hezbollah is hiding hundreds of millions of dollars underneath.