The first Israeli airstrike that rattled Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Tuesday struck without warning, destroying a four-story building in the heart of the city. Then a barrage of airstrikes struck the city’s southern suburbs in quick succession: One strike, then two, then 20 — all within minutes and all sending plumes of black smoke across the skyline.
Soon a city on edge was panicked, as the Israeli military issued warnings for four more imminent strikes in the capital. People jumped into their cars or took to the streets on foot trying to get out of the city, clogging the roads with crowds and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Few were certain of where to go or how to avoid the neighborhoods highlighted in the warnings.
“There is no safe place tonight,” said Mohammed Awada, 52, who fled the southern suburbs of Beirut in October.
The Israeli bombardment of Beirut and its surroundings on Tuesday was the most intense since the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated, stoking panic in the Lebanese capital as people anxiously waited for news of a cease-fire deal.
The airstrikes struck in the heart of the capital after a series of evacuation warnings — the first for the city center during the war. Around 10 minutes later, airstrikes began hitting central Beirut, leaving almost no time for people to evacuate. The areas targeted included an upscale neighborhood on Beirut’s seafront, home to the American University of Beirut.
The intensified bombings came as Israeli officials prepared to meet to discuss a possible cease-fire with Hezbollah. The final days of the 2006 Lebanon war, the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, featured some of the most intense Israeli bombardments of that war.
Lebanon’s health ministry said that at least 10 people were killed and dozens of others injured in the strikes on Tuesday in Beirut. Many were presumed to be still trapped under rubble, with rescuers working into the night as Israeli surveillance drones whirred overhead. Southern Lebanon, where Israel is involved in a ground offensive, also experienced heavy strikes throughout the day that killed at least eight people, including children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
The Israeli military also carried out some of its most intense bombardment yet on the Dahiya, the southern outskirts of Beirut that is effectively governed by Hezbollah. The strikes sent a huge cloud of smoke into the city’s skyline. Unlike Beirut, the once-bustling area has been left almost entirely empty in recent weeks as a result of Israel’s bombing campaign.
The simultaneous wave of strikes in the Dahiya and central Beirut sounded for miles, rattling windows and sending people running for cover.
Shortly before 6 p.m., Marie Therese Zouein Tabet was attending a funeral in the Dunes Center in the Verdun district of Beirut when she received a text message on her phone with a link to an evacuation warning from the Israeli military for parts of Beirut. Within seconds, the room filled with buzzing and ringing as the hundreds of people in attendance received similar messages from friends and family.
People looked at one another, panicked, and started rushing to the door. But even as they left the building, many were unsure of where to go or how to get there without crossing through neighborhoods outlined on the maps of the evacuation warnings.
“It’s terrifying; everywhere the roads are closing,” Ms. Zouein Tabet said. “We cannot go back home because we don’t know which road to take.”
Zeinab Jouneideh, who lives in the Zuqaq al Blat neighborhood of Beirut, which was included in the evacuation warnings, said that she and all her neighbors in her apartment building had fled in a panic. Her two sisters ran to a nearby school. Her brother fled to the basement parking garage of their building and sheltered in his car. Her nephew went somewhere — where exactly she did not know.
Her sister asked her if she could go to Ms. Jouneideh’s office in the Hamra area of the city. Then she saw that Hamra, too, was included in the warnings.
“All of Beirut is under attack,” Ms. Jouneideh said.
The post Intense Israeli airstrikes send people fleeing central Beirut in panic. appeared first on New York Times.
