An Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, March 28, 2025. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient-Le Jour)
At midday on Friday, four months after the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect, Israel carried out an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs — the first since the truce took effect. After several warning shots, Israeli warplanes struck a building in Hadath, where residents had been urged to evacuate more than an hour earlier.
The blast was heard across the capital and its suburbs, sending thick black smoke into the sky. The Israeli military claimed on X that the strike targeted “a drone storage facility of Hezbollah’s aerial unit 127,” near two schools.
L’Orient-Le Jour spoke with residents before and after the main strike. Wissam Mehanna, from the Sainte Therese neighborhood, a few hundred meters away from the targeted building, said he was stuck in a parking lot due to traffic until a friend picked him up on a moped. “It was chaos — people were fighting, side mirrors clashing, and mopeds being knocked over,” he said.
One evacuee from Shatila tells L'Orient Today that while there is chaos and confusion, the situation on the streets has not spiralled out of control. "The turn around was super quick from seeing the threats this morning to evacuating. There seemed to be a bit of confusion on the ground in terms of whether strikes had already happened yet or just the evacuations. When I was in the street, people were trying to get my attention to tell me about Israeli war planes."
Despite that, she said that there was no "mad panic or crazy traffic," likely due to the fact that she left with her colleagues immediately after the evacuation order and Shatila is not located in the evacuation circle.
Hadath Mayor Georges Aoun expressed frustration: “Every time we take a step forward, we take 10 steps back. People displaced by the war had started rebuilding and returning. After today’s strike, they grabbed their children and left again.”
Videos showed panic in the southern suburbs, with heavy traffic forming on several streets. At least one person was seriously injured in the strike on Hadath.