The Israeli army razed a building in a suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut today that it said housed “facilities” of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, the Associated Press reported. The agency notes that there was smoke and debris in the air a hundred meters from the place where a spokesperson of the movement gave a press conference.
At the briefing, Mohammed Afifi announced that Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the drone attack on the residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the city of Caesarea.
AP specifies that the strike was carried out 40 minutes after Israeli forces called for the evacuation of people in two buildings in the area, and draws attention to the fact that today Netanyahu met with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
For the first US diplomat, this is the 11th visit to the Middle East since the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip, which broke out on October 7 last year after the surprise bloody attack by the radical Palestinian group “Hamas” on Israeli territory.
Blinken landed in Israel hours after Hezbollah fired a volley of rockets into central Israel almost at the same time as an Israeli strike heavily damaged Beirut’s largest state hospital.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 63 people were killed and 234 injured in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of casualties to 2,546 and 11,862 injured in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah over the past year, writes Dir. bg