It’s been over a week since Israel imposed a full evacuation order on the entire eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, a city which has seen constant human habitation for roughly 11,000 years. Scores have been killed in and around the city since then, and attacks have been ongoing in and outside of the evacuation zones.
Today saw another escalation of the strikes, with at least 40 people being killed inside Baalbek and in the surrounding areas. The Health Ministry also said 53 people were wounded, which was roughly in-line with figures reported by the governor there.
The governor also reported that there were at least 40 separate Israeli strikes across the Baalbek-Hermel governate. It’s not clear what specifically was being targeted in any of the attacks, and Israel has not commented.
Rescue workers are reportedly still active at a lot of the sites, lifting the heavy stones and wreckage of collapsed buildings and trying to find other people still buried within. That suggests that the toll may well increase further in the hours to come.
There are also reports that one of the sites hit the al-Mansheya archaeological area. The strike was less than 200 meters from some particularly important historical sites, and officials say it is still too dangerous to check to see if any specific sites were damaged in the strike.
Today’s attacks came as Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, said that he did not believe that any political action would bring about a cessation of Israeli attacks on Lebanon. He did express openness to indirect talks if Israel stopped attacking the country.
That seems unlikely, and Israeli officials reiterated calls for people in southern suburbs of Beirut to evacuate the area, claiming they are near “interests affiliated with Hezbollah” and which Israel would soon act again. Once again, no warning came to any of the sites around Baalbek, and the strikes appear to have hit both inside the pre-existing evacuation zones and outside of them.
