Israel resumes bombardment on Beirut's suburbs

Israel resumed punishing airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs and across central and southern Lebanon. More than 130 strikes targeted what Israel says were Hezbollah operatives and locations. Israel’s military also said more than 90 Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel today. Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reports.

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Amna Nawaz: In the day’s other news: Israel resumed punishing airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs and across Central and Southern Lebanon.

More than 130 strikes targeted what Israel says were Hezbollah operatives and locations. Israel’s military also said more than 90 Hezbollah rockets were fired into Northern Israel today.

Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reports.

Leila Molana-Allen: Slim hopes for a cease-fire dashed.

Yesterday, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister said he’d had guarantees from the United States that the bombing of Beirut would cease. Today’s skyline told a different story. After a few days of relief, the bombardment of the capital’s southern suburbs resumed, heavier than ever.

There’s been a huge increase in the intensity and frequency of the airstrikes here, and now much of these southern suburbs are devastated. It’s one of the most heavily populated areas around Beirut. And that means that tens of thousands of people have been removed from their homes.

In the southern city of Nabatiyeh, a meeting of the mayor and his municipal workers became this region’s next graveyard. The target of the Israeli strike here was the city’s crisis Management hub, meeting to organize and distribute aid to displaced families.

Mayor Ahmad Khalil and his team were all killed. The death toll is 16 and rising. More than 50 were injured. As volunteer first responders tried to save their colleagues, they sent out desperate voice messages.

Man (through interpreter): The mayor’s inside. Everyone’s inside. No one could survive this. They’re all dead.

Leila Molana-Allen: When the IDF told Nabatiyeh’s residents to leave earlier this month, Ahmad and his team refused. They felt they had to stay to help the thousands of Lebanese still stuck and increasingly cut off by the bombardment in towns and villages across the governorate.

Dania is one of a group of mothers in Beirut raising funds to help provide essentials to the more than 1.2 million Lebanese made homeless by this war. She was coordinating with Ahmad’s team.

Dania Dandashli, Volunteer: They specifically said they wanted milk and baby diapers. Two hours later, we got the news that there was a raid on the municipality that was organizing all the relief efforts, and we learned that the person that we were on the phone with was killed.

Leila Molana-Allen: Many here from across Lebanon’s political and religious spectrum increasingly view this as a war waged against them, not just by Israel, but by its main backer, the United States, including some of its own citizens.

Dania Dandashli: They had every opportunity to have stopped this war, and they refused. They refused. They continued to send weapons to Israel with taxes I’m paying for, because I am an American citizen. I mean, the carte blanche that the Biden administration is giving the Israelis, what it means is death, what it means is killing, what it means is destruction.

It means destroying villages, destroying homes, destroying our trust in the world. We have lost trust in the world.

Leila Molana-Allen: And every day, as the world watches, more death and destruction unfolds here.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Leila Molana-Allen in Beirut.