Massive Israeli air raids in Lebanon on Saturday damaged several residential buildings in the southern and eastern parts of the country, creating a significant threat to residents as well as international journalists.
Evangelo Sipsas, a China Global Television Network (CGTN) reporter in the southern city of Tyre, witnessed Saturday's assault from a hotel shelter. He reported hearing a series of explosions, including one that struck part of the hotel where he was staying, causing significant damage and filling the rooms with thick smoke.
Within minutes, at least 20 to 30 separate blasts could be heard in the vicinity. The CGTN team was subsequently moved to a safer area of the hotel, which was hosting a UN convoy and numerous foreign journalists covering the conflict.
"There was some sort of explosion. We don't know what it was, we don't know if it was a targeted strike, we don't know if it was an explosion of another strike that took place close by, but there was an attack. Two to three rooms from the hotel got destroyed," he said.
Sipsas later evacuated from Tyre with a convoy heading to Beirut, where airstrikes had also been reported on Friday and Saturday. Israel claimed that its targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut included Hezbollah weapons allegedly stored beneath civilian structures.
Local resident Ahmad Ijaber condemned the strikes in Beirut as a brutal assault on civilians.
"Yesterday, a representative of the enemy army got on Twitter to ask the residents to evacuate the buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He claimed that these places contain missiles and underground precision missile factories and that Hezbollah is using them as a cover. After they were bombed, we did not see any secondary explosions, and we did not see any explosions that would show that these places were command centers or manufacturing bases, not to mention that the bombing continued for more than five hours, from midnight until six in the morning," Ijaber said.
"They continued to bomb the targets with planes, throwing tons of explosives on defenseless citizens without any justification, without any compassion for children and women. The enemy army is committing massacres all over the south, from Bekaa to the southern suburbs [of Beirut]," he said.
Israel's recent military escalation since Monday has resulted in over 650 deaths, more than 2,000 injuries, the displacement of many others, and damage to thousands of homes, as well as commercial and industrial establishments across Lebanon.
UN humanitarians warned on Thursday that ongoing violence in Lebanon has forced more than 90,000 people from their homes, with 70,000 sheltering in 400 schools and other sites, marking the largest displacement since the onset of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in October last year.
Israeli airstrikes damage residential buildings in Lebanon, threaten civilians, journalists
