After Israel hit Hezbollah-linked banks, Lebanon assesses the damage

Israeli strikes on the Dahiyeh area of Beirut During the July 1 rocket attack on northern Gaza: The UN mission and Lebanon’s rescue service

The Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 87 people were dead or missing after Israeli strikes on homes in northern Gaza.

Hezbollah is partiallyfinanced and supported by the government of Iran, and Israeli forces will keep hitting the Iranian proxy until it collapses.

The UN mission in Lebanon called out Israeli forces for destroying an observation tower and a fence on Sunday. It resisted the pressure to leave.

Hezbollah fired more than 170 rockets into the country on Sunday. The Magen David Adom rescue service said there were injuries from the fire caused by the rocket attack on Safed.

Lebanon has largely stayed out of the war. The military in Lebanon is respected but isn’t strong enough to impose its will on Hezbollah or defend the country against an Israeli invasion.

TEL AVIV, Israel, and BEIRUT — Israel’s military carried out airstrikes overnight on targets in Lebanon that the military says are linked to a financial institution that undergirds the militant group Hezbollah. Lebanon is assessing the damage.

Israel has increased strikes on southern neighborhoods of Beirut known as the Dahiyeh, a crowded residential area where Hezbollah has a strong presence. It’s also home to a lot of people who are not associated with the militant group.

The Israeli military confused and freaked out the people in the area by mislabeling one of the targets. More than six miles away, in the upscale shopping mall in central Lebanon, is the location of the Grand Cinema ABC Verdun.

Israel sends ground troops into Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah war: The Gazan people fleeing after a day of bloodshed

A year of escalating tensions and frequent cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the war in Gaza turned into all-out war last month. Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon.

The announcement came a day after Lloyd Austin, the Defense Secretary of the United States, said that civilian deaths in Lebanon were too high during the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Around 1,200 people died and another 250 were kidnapped when Hamas blew holes in Israel’s security fence and struck on October 7, 2023. Around 100 captives are still in Gaza, and many of them are believed to be dead.

Israel ordered the entire population of the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, to evacuate to the south in the war’s opening weeks and reiterated those instructions this month. A lot of people are believed to have not left.

Internet connectivity went down in northern Gaza late Saturday, making it difficult to gather information about strikes and complicating rescue efforts.

The Health Ministry said Israeli soldiers had fired at two hospitals in northern Gaza over the weekend, prompting Doctors Without Borders to call for an immediate stop to their attacks.

A car was hit and six people, including a child, were killed. AP journalists counted the dead.

The Gaza Non-Profit for the Cross-Section Between Israel and Israel in the Era of the September 11 September Referendum

The U.S. is urging Israel to press for a cease-fire in Gaza following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week. But neither Israel nor Hamas has shown interest in such a deal after negotiations sputtered to a halt in August.

Among the dead were parents and eight children, according to Raheem Kheder, a medic. He said the strike flattened a multistory building and at least four neighboring houses.

Al-Qard al-Hassan claimed in a statement that it had takenmeasures to ensure the customers funds were safe after it was targeted by Israel. A stream of people left the areas surrounding its branches in Beirut.

The organization is cash-based. He said that the cash in large accounts will be thrown away in the event of strikes.

“It’s a big deal,” said David Asher, an expert on illicit financing who has worked at the U.S. Defense and State Departments and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

The nonprofit is used by ordinary people in Lebanon as well as by Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Hezbollah has used the benevolent loan to spread its support among the Shiite population of a country where state and financial institutions have failed in recent years.

Hezbollah’s Economic Strongholds: Israeli Threats and Strikes on the Financial Institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan

There were warnings that affected the southern part of Lebanon. The only airport in Lebanon was shown in the video. but it continued to operate.

The Israeli military published messages in Arabic instructing the people in Lebanon to move away from the buildings where the branch of the bank is located.

A senior Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to detail attack plans before they were carried out, on Sunday told reporters that Israel planned the strikes throughout Lebanon against several of the institution’s branches that act like banks to help fund Hezbollah — what the official termed the organization’s “economic strongholds.”

The Carnegie Middle East Center’s director shared that Al-Qard Al-Hassan was a Microfinance institution similar to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The institution in Lebanon provides small loans to low income individuals against their specific assets in a country where the banking system has repeatedly collapsed.

Ihab Hamadeh, a lawmaker in the parliament of Hezbollah, insists that the group did not profit from Al-Qard Al-Hassan. He said that the financial institution has granted thousands of scholarships to university students overseas. He wrote on Telegram that the Al-Qard Al-Hassan depositors would not lose a penny.

A hospital in the Lebanese town of Baalbek was rumored to have been emptied due to a strike on one of the branches. But in a statement Lebanon’s health ministry denied that, and said the hospital was operating normally. It said that following the Israeli threats, patients were moved out of their rooms near the Al-Qard Al-Hassan branch.

Details of deaths and injuries from Monday’s strikes have not yet been confirmed. Lebanon’s National News Agency said the strikes on at least one of the financial branches caused damage to other floors in the same building, as well as neighboring buildings, including nearby stores. The agency said that the strike on one branch caused severe damage to surrounding homes and a radio station in the city of Tyre.

A drone that the Iranian state news agency says Hezbollah sent from Lebanon had targeted the family residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the northern city of Caesarea, according to the prime minister’s office. Sara Netanyahu described it as an attempt to kill the prime minister of Israel and an attack on the people of Israel in a social media post.