Smoke rises over the village of Taybeh in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli army triggered powerful explosions on Oct. 26, 2024. (Credit: AFP)
Earthquake alerts were mistakenly triggered Saturday morning in several northern Israeli localities and in Samaria, northern occupied West Bank, more than 100 kilometers from the Lebanon-Israel border, according to Israeli media.
The Jerusalem Post reported these ''false alerts'' were due to large detonations set off by the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. The alerts coincided with the destruction by the Israeli army of houses in the Lebanese border village of Odaisseh in the Marjayoun district and nearby Taybeh. The ground shook due to the explosions, reported local residents cited by our southern Lebanon correspondent, Muntasser Abdallah.
On Friday, the Israeli army set off similar explosions in Kfar Kila, in the same district. The Israeli army has stepped up this type of operation since the start of its escalation in Lebanon, even exploding an entire village, Mhaybib in the Marjayoun district, a few days ago. The village of Yaroun, in the Bint Jbeil district, also appears to have been ''razed'' by the Israeli army, according to videos that circulated online in early October.
The Jerusalem Post reports that 284 localities in northern Israel and Samaria, in the occupied West Bank, have received an alert from the country's Institute of Geology ''following a misidentification''.
''After a significant controlled explosion occurred this morning [Saturday morning] in the northern region, the warning system identified the explosion as an earthquake and the alert was issued accordingly,'' the Institute of Geology told the Jerusalem Post.
According to the Post, the system was misled, probably because the explosion occurred near one of its sensors. Even the European international monitoring network recorded the detonation as seismic activity, says the Jerusalem Post.
''Sounds of explosions were heard in the north of the country following an Israeli military operation in southern Lebanon. There is no security incident to report,'' an army spokesperson told the Israeli newspaper Maariv. The anti-seismic alert system subsequently identified these explosions as an earthquake and issued an alert, Maariv added.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
