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Israel said Wednesday night that it had begun a “large-scale wave of strikes” on Beirut’s suburbs after Hezbollah launched what the Israeli military said were “more than 100” rockets.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strikes targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in the Dahieh suburb of southern Beirut, an area Israel considers a stronghold for the Iran-backed militant group.
The IDF’s Arabic-speaking spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued what he called an “urgent and serious warning” to residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs on social media before the strikes, urging residents to evacuate immediately ahead of what he said would be a major operation against Hezbollah.
Just as the IDF released its statement, a Reuters camera scanning the skyline of Beirut caught the flash of an explosion in the city’s south. Soon afterward, the same camera captured numerous strikes in the span of seconds, and the view of Beirut was soon eclipsed by black smoke.
CNN teams on the ground in Beirut heard and felt an earth-shaking explosion soon after the wave began, reporting it was significantly stronger than any blast heard over the past several days of strikes.
The IDF said the strikes come after Hezbollah’s “deliberate decision to attack Israel on behalf of the Iranian regime.”
On social media, Hezbollah said it had launched “Operation Asf al-Ma’koul,” a phrase derived from a Quranic verse.
It refers to the imagery of destruction in the Quranic story of “The Elephant,” where an army is destroyed by divine intervention, leaving them like “eaten straw.”
In a later statement, the militant group said its fighters fired “dozens of rockets” at Israeli towns near the border, describing the attack as retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Minutes before Israel announced its strikes on Dahieh, the IDF and Israeli emergency services reported a barrage of rockets from Lebanon. At least two people were “mildly” injured in northern Israel, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency service.
CNN’s Joseph Ataman, Avery Schmitz and Michael Rios contributed.
This post has been updated with new information.