Israeli airstrikes on Monday killed at least 60 people in the Bekaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon, Lebanese officials said, in what appeared to be the deadliest barrage of strikes in the area since the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah escalated last month.
At least 58 others were injured in the attacks according to Lebanon’s health ministry, which reported the death toll. Most of the airstrikes were concentrated in Baalbek district, a patchwork of farmlands and villages in the valley that is home to a city of the same name. Hezbollah holds sway in parts of the district, one of Lebanon’s most underdeveloped regions, which borders Syria.
Israel’s military has said that its operation in Lebanon is targeting Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. On Tuesday, Israel’s military said its forces had engaged in “joint aerial and ground operations” against “terror infrastructure sites” in Lebanon, but it did not mention the Bekaa Valley.
While Israeli airstrikes have rained down across the valley over the past month, residents described the barrage of strikes on Monday night and Tuesday morning as the most intense they had experienced. The strikes also hit within the city of Baalbek — an urban center that has been largely spared in Israel’s recent air campaign — stoking unease that a rare pocket of relative safety in the district was no longer.
“They were the most powerful strikes we’ve had here,” said Ibrahim Bayan, a deputy of the mayor of Baalbek city. “We thought the strikes wouldn’t stop until they had leveled all of Baalbek.”
At around 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Mr. Bayan began to hear the thud, thud, thud of airstrikes raining down on the hills surrounding the city, he said. Then at around 7 p.m., his house shook and some of his windows shattered after strikes hit within the city limits. Mr. Bayan said he had barely slept the rest of the night as the booms of strikes and the roar of ambulance sirens echoed across the city.
At Rayak Hospital, a private facility in the Bekaa Valley, patients began flooding into the emergency room soon after the strikes began on Monday night, according to the hospital’s director.
“It was one of the most difficult nights not just for the hospital, but for everyone here,” said the director, Dr. Ali Abdallah.
As dawn broke and the barrage ended on Tuesday morning, residents in Baalbek ventured out of their homes to size up the destruction: Within the city, the strikes had leveled several buildings around Gouraud Barracks, an old French military base that has been used as a residential neighborhood since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990 and is situated near the city’s ancient Roman ruins. At least nine people living in Gouraud were killed, officials said.
Mr. Bayan said that residents in Gouraud had received evacuation orders from the Israeli military last week. Some residents opted to stay after receiving the warning. Others left and then returned, assuming the area was safe a week after the warning was issued.
Hezbollah began firing on Israeli positions in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel last year. Israel ramped up its attacks on Hezbollah last month, killing and injuring many of its leaders and fighters and drawing Lebanon into a broader war.
The Bekaa Valley had been largely spared in the tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Hezbollah over the past year. But since the conflict intensified and expanded to eastern Lebanon, around 70 percent of residents in Baalbek have fled the city, turning the once bustling urban center into a ghost town, according to Mr. Bayan. The strikes on Monday night rattled the few who remained, he added.
“Most people have no idea what to do with themselves,” Mr. Bayan said. “Those who have money already left. Those who can’t afford to go anywhere have stayed. Now they are just surviving on hope.”
The post Dozens Killed in Israeli Strikes in Eastern Lebanon, Lebanese Officials Say appeared first on New York Times.
