A man at the site of the Israeli strike on the southern suburb of Beirut, April 27, 2025. (Credit: AFP)
An Israeli jet bombed a building in Hadath, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, on Sunday afternoon, which was marked about an hour earlier by the Israeli military, in a rare warning since the cease-fire took effect at the end of November 2024. No information was immediately available regarding possible casualties.
Videos from different angles of the bombing show the rumble of a fighter jet and clearly show at least three missiles hitting their target. A fire broke out on the scene but was quickly contained, according to local media, while thick smoke rose above the neighborhood.
The strike hit "a facility housing Hezbollah's precision missiles that posed a threat to Israel's security," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz in a joint statement, as reported by the daily Haaretz.
Security sources contacted by Israeli Army Radio accused Hezbollah shortly before of "storing weapons" in the building struck by the air force. The Israeli army explained that "measures were taken to avoid harming civilians, including issuing a prior warning to residents and using precision munitions." Regarding the targeted location, it stated that it was "an infrastructure used for storing Hezbollah's precision missiles." Lebanese media reported that the struck location is a hall used for Ashoura commemorations, located in the area known as Jamous.
Israeli Army Radio, citing its sources, specified that the army had informed the United States before launching its strike.
France and the United States face their 'responsibilities'
President Joseph Aoun condemned the strike in a brief statement posted on X. He urged France and the United States, sponsors of the cease-fire agreement and part of the committee normally responsible for monitoring the agreement's implementation, to "assume their responsibilities and force Israel to immediately halt its attacks." Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, for his part, condemned the "terror Israel inflicts on people in their homes, as they seek to regain a normal life," according to a statement published on X by the Grand Serail. He called on the "countries sponsoring the security agreement for the cessation of hostilities to take steps to end these attacks and accelerate Israel's full withdrawal from Lebanese territory." The foreign minister said he would "continue his contacts" to end Israel's violations of the truce.
Before the strike, whose explosion was heard miles around, three warning strikes, using a drone, were fired on the designated area.
The evacuation notice for the strike's target, a hangar, was published by Israeli army Arabic-langauge spokesperson Avichay Adraee on X, calling for the evacuation of "anyone in the building marked in red on the attached map, as well as in nearby buildings," designating on a map a hangar which was explained to be a "Hezbollah facility." Such warnings were common in October and November 2024 during the full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Since the beginning of the truce, this is the second time a similar notice has been issued. It is the third strike targeting the southern suburbs of Beirut since the cease-fire on Nov. 27, 2024, which ended more than a year of war between the party and Israeli. The first took place on Feb. 28 in Hadath with a similar prior warning, injuring at least one person, while the second occurred on the night of March 30, without warning, killing four.
'I can't take it anymore'
After the evacuation order was published, residents of the area fled, alerted especially by heavy gunfire. Khadija Husseini, who lives along the airport road in the southern suburbs of Beirut, told L'Orient Today that she was sleeping when she was awakened by the gunfire.
"I woke up, saw that I had dozens of messages on WhatsApp about the evacuation notice ... I made my coffee and waited for the strike, what else could I do?" she said.
Tearfully, Zahra Sbeity, 16, explained that she has been "in a constant state of fear" since the April 1 strike on the southern suburbs carried out without warning by the Israeli military. "I can't sleep and I constantly check Avichay's' Adraee X account, the Israeli army spokesperson," she explained. "I can't take it anymore."
Ghinaj Abou Khalil, who lives in Jamous and stayed home after the warning, said she had become "numb and immune."
"Before the war [between Israel and Hezbollah], I used to be scared at the slightest door slam, but now I hear a strike without even flinching. Things took a terrible turn after Sayyed [Hassan Nasrallah] died."
Houssam Breiteh, who had to drive his 5-year-old daughter and wife out of the southern suburbs after the warning so they "wouldn't hear the strike and realize what was happening," criticized the policy of diplomacy by Lebanese authorities, speaking from Ain al-Mreisseh. He argued that "the state has never defended Shiites against Israeli attacks, which is why we had to arm ourselves. It's always been this way," emphasizing that the weakening of Hezbollah has made the situation worse.
