At least 11 more people have been killed today as Israel continues its airstrikes against Lebanon, with substantial focuses of the strikes being residential areas and a hotel in the Christian-majority part of the capital city of Beirut.
The Comfort Hotel, in between Hamzieh and Baabda, was directly across the street from the Sacre Coeur Hospital, and adjacent to the Chaldean Christian Cathedral of St. Raphael. While the IDF issued a generalized statement about the attacks targeting “Hezbollah infrastructure,” they did not explain why they attacked a hotel next to a hospital and a cathedral.
Though Israel has been carrying out near daily attacks on Lebanon for months now, the rate and intensity of the attacks has dramatically escalated since the beginning of the new war on Iran last weekend. Israeli planes returning from bombing runs on Iran reportedly just stop off in Lebanon to hit targets there since they’re in the area anyway.
The Comfort Hotel in metro Beirut
In addition to the attacks on Beirut, Israel’s military has issued an evacuation order that covers effectively the entire area south of the Litani River in Lebanon, an order issued as Israeli ground troops entered the border of Khiam.
The Litani River winds through southern and eastern Lebanon, going from the Bekaa Valley down into southern Lebanon and eventually emptying into the Mediterranean north of Tyre. An evacuation of everything south of that will encompass some 250,000 people and multiple towns and cities.
Lebanese officials reported some 83,000 civilians displaced by the war already, and that number seems like it’s going to grow exponentially with the new evacuation order and the ground invasion that has accompanied it.
UNIFIL peacekeepers reported multiple Israeli incursions into towns and villages along the border, and since the evacuation order covers effectively the entire border area that the UNIFIL was meant to patrol, many of their peacekeepers are now reportedly confined to base.
Back in the summer, Israel reportedly pushed a plan to totally depopulate southern Lebanon for the sake of creating a “Trump zone,” and while that scheme appeared to have been rejected by Lebanese officials, these evacuation orders are a de facto effort to depopulate the self-same area, though so far there is no indication that Israel intends the evacuation to be permanent.
