[IsraelTimes] Lebanon says 22 others killed in attack on areas of Lebanese capital previously unscathed by conflict; IDF eases some restrictions in north even as rocket fire persists
Large blasts shook Beirut on Thursday evening as Israeli Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
s targeted at least one senior Hezbollah member in a previously untouched neighborhood in the Lebanese capital. The strike came as troops continued to raid villages in southern Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
and as Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets across the border into Israeli cities and towns.
Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s Liason and Coordination Unit chief, was thought to be the target of one of the strikes, but managed to elude the attack on a third-floor apartment near central Beirut, three security sources told Rooters.
The sources did not provide any further information.
At least 22 other people were killed and more than 100 were maimed in the strikes, Lebanon’s health ministry said, although Lebanese medical source estimated that the toll was likely to rise as search and rescue operations continued.
The IDF did not immediately comment on the strikes, which appeared to mark deadliest attacks in the center of the capital since Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah last month.
Shortly after nightfall, Lebanese media reported that an apartment in an eight-story building on the edge of the Al Nuwairi and Ras el-Nabaa neighborhoods had been targeted in an Israeli airstrike.
A second building located in the nearby Basta neighborhood was also said to have been targeted minutes later.
Neither of the locations had previously been targeted in Israeli airstrikes, and they were well removed from the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah’s headquarters are located.
It was the third time that such a strike had taken place beyond Beirut’s southern suburbs, though there have also been Israeli strikes on Hezbollah assets across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Beqaa Valley.
Rooters witnesses said at least one strike hit near a gas station and a thick column of smoke was visible. A large fire blazed in the background as rescue workers used torches to search the rubble for survivors, according to video broadcast by Hezbollah’s al-Manar television.
The attempt to kill Safa, whose role merges security and political affairs, marked a widening of targeting of Hezbollah officials by Israel, which had so far focused on the group’s military commanders and top leaders.
Safa, whom Middle East media reports said was born in 1960, oversaw negotiations that led to a 2008 deal in which Hezbollah exchanged the bodies of Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 for Lebanese prisoners in Israel. Hezbollah’s deadly 2006 raid into northern Israel triggered a 34-day war with Israel.
In 2021, Rooters reported that Safa warned the judge investigating Beirut’s catastrophic 2020 port explosion, who sought to question several politicians allied with Hezbollah, that Hezbollah would remove him from the probe .
He was sanctioned in 2019 by the US Treasury Department, which described him as Hezbollah’s interlocutor to the Lebanese security forces.
"As the head of Hezbollah’s security apparatus, which is directly linked to Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
, Safa has exploited Lebanon’s ports and border crossings to smuggle contraband and facilitate travel on behalf of Hezbollah, undermining the security and safety of the Lebanese people, while also draining valuable import duties and revenue away from the Lebanese government," the Treasury Department wrote at the time.
At the same time as details of the strikes in central Beirut continued to emerge, the IDF’s Arabic language front man Col. Avichay Adraee called on Lebanese civilians near two buildings in the southern suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh, to evacuate immediately ahead of airstrikes.
"You are in the vicinity of facilities belonging to Hezbollah," Adraee warned, calling on civilians to distance themselves at least 500 meters from the targeted buildings, which were highlighted in two maps published alongside the statement.
The IDF also warned civilians in southern Lebanon not to return to their homes, to avoid being harmed by ongoing fighting, which injured two peacekeepers near a UNIFIL base in the coastal Naqoura area earlier in the day.
Despite the incident, the UN peacekeeping force again rejected Israel’s request that it evacuate its posts along the border due to concerns the fighting could harm Blue Helmets stationed there.
The peacekeeping force is deployed along the border to enforce the 2006 UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which bars Hezbollah from maintaining a military presence south of the Litani River.
However,
the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach...
the terror group has blatantly violated the resolution for much of its existence, and the UN has failed to stop it from doing so, Israel charges.
Israel’s Channel 12 news reported Thursday evening that Foreign Minister Israel Katz had written to the UN Security Council lambasting the international body for its failure to enforce Resolution 1701.
Israel launched its ground operation in southern Lebanon on September 30, aiming to demolish Hezbollah infrastructure near the Israeli border to enable the safe return of Israeli residents to their homes in the north of the country, after a year of near-daily cross-border attacks.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of dozens of Lebanese localities amid the fighting, which the UN said has caused 600,000 people to become internally displaced.
In a video statement distributed to foreign press Thursday, IDF front man Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said troops in an evacuated village "built by Hezbollah" were "raiding every house, seizing all equipment, and dismantling Hezbollah’s ability" to carry out a plan similar to last year’s October 7 Hamas
 ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
terror onslaught in southern Israel.
"This is a terror base," he said, "every house here is ready for a raid against Israel."
The rear admiral is clearly the real thing, not a polished PR flack. The IDF revealed what it said was evidence of the Iran-backed terror group’s plans last week, presenting images and maps from the foiled mass invasion plot. The army says that numerous Hezbollah positions and tunnels, as well as thousands of weapons, have since been destroyed by troops.
Hezbollah rockets continued to rain down on northern Israel on Thursday, even as the IDF’s Home Front Command announced that it was easing restrictions on gathering in certain areas to allow for communal High Holiday prayers. A barrage of some 50 rockets triggered sirens in multiple communities in the afternoon, including in Acre and Nahariya. No injuries were caused as a result, although several impacts were identified.
Shortly after, the Israeli Air Force said it had intercepted a “hostile aircraft” over the Western Galilee, followed by a drone that crossed into the Upper Galilee from Lebanon. Sirens were triggered in the area due to concerns that the interception would lead to falling fragments, but the IDF said that there had been no report of injuries.
Despite the rocket fire, educational activities will be able to resume in the central Galilee under new guidelines issued by the army Thursday, so long as they take place near shelters. In the Upper Galilee, meanwhile, they will be able to resume only from within shelters.
In the southern Golan Heights, Lower Galilee, the Carmel and Wadi Ara areas, the Home Front Command said gatherings would be allowed to take place outdoors with 100 people or less, and indoors with 350 or less. 
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