Beirut. Israeli airstrike, recordings of explosions in the capital of Lebanon

Israeli troops have been conducting massive shelling of the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut since Saturday evening, described by witnesses as the heaviest since the beginning of the ongoing operation against Iran-backed Hezbollah.

One of the recordings made available by Reuters shows, among others: a ball of fire that was created after the impact of one of the missiles. Most likely – according to the agency – the source of the explosion was an impact on a gas station located next to the hotel and near the airport. Despite the cloud of smoke and flames, planes still landed in the local port.

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The Israel Defense Forces said the air force “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons warehouses and terrorist infrastructure facilities belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the Beirut area.”

– The buildings around us were shaking and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of blows, I couldn't count them all, and their sounds were deafening, reported Hanan Abdullah, who lives in a southern suburb of Beirut.

Earlier, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah was killed in bombings in that area, and perhaps also his potential successor Hashem Safiedine. Sources in Lebanon reported on Saturday that contact with him had been cut off the day before.

The Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, General Herci Halewi, announced on Friday that the army will continue to fight Hezbollah, not allowing this terrorist group a moment of “relief or respite”.

Halewi added that about 440 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the ground operation in southern Lebanon since Tuesday. On Saturday, the army also announced the destruction of the group's command center, located in a hospital mosque in the border town of Bint Jbeil.

Israel has been intensively bombing Lebanon for two weeks, and since Tuesday it has been conducting a ground operation in the south of the country, claiming that its target is Hezbollah terrorists. The Iran-backed organization has been fighting Israel with varying intensity for decades, and since the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip a year ago, it has been shelling the north of the Jewish state, which is met with strong counterattacks.

At least 1,400 people have been killed in Israeli attacks over the past two weeks, and about 1.2 million Lebanese were forced to leave their homes because of them, the AP reported on Saturday. The media reports that a large proportion of the victims are civilians. Lebanon is inhabited by approximately 5.5 million people.