Israel attacks south Lebanon on an almost daily basis, but this morning the strike was one of the heaviest in weeks, targeting a heavy machinery store in the village of Msayleh. The strikes did enormous damage to infrastructure to be used in post-war reconstruction, and also temporarily severed the highway leading from Beirut to the south of the country.
As is more or less exclusively the case when the IDF comments on their attacks, they tried to tie this all to Hezbollah, presenting all of the unpurchased construction vehicles as “Hezbollah vehicles” and that they were to be used for rebuilding “terror infrastructure.”
One person was killed in the course of the strikes, a Syrian national who was driving a truckload of fruits and vegetables by the site during the attack. Seven other people were also reported wounded in the strike, including two women.
Fruit truck destroyed by IDF airstrike on southern Lebanon | Image from X
More than 300 bulldozers and excavators were destroyed in the attack, doing damage estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The site was said to be among the most prominent heavy machinery sites in the country.
Lebanese officials were quick to condemn the attack as a deliberate strike on civilian infrastructure. Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri said that the incident amounted to an attack on all of Lebanon, and urged unity in opposition to the ongoing strikes.
Hezbollah also called for Lebanon to take a “firm stance” against the ongoing Israeli aggression, issuing a statement that added that the strike “reflects continuous Zionist arrogance and brutality carried out under the watch of the countries guaranteeing the ceasefire and its monitoring committee, amid Arab and international silence and full American cover that emboldens Israel to persist in its attacks.”
In the course of their constant attacks on Lebanon, Israel has regularly targeted construction vehicles, particularly those trying to restore agricultural lands damaged during the 2024 invasion. When the IDF comments on those attacks, they effectively always claim that the vehicle is being used by Hezbollah, and often that the person plowing a field is a Hezbollah “commander” of some import. They never offer evidence of this, but it gets reported in the Israeli media as an undisputed fact, and that the presence of Hezbollah trying to plow fields amounts to the real violation of the ceasefire.
Further Israeli attacks were reported Friday and into Saturday. Israeli ground troops demolished a building in Ayta ash-Shaab, claiming to have intelligence it was used by Hezbollah, and also attacked and destroyed a vehicle in Qalaouiyeh Saturday morning.
