\n Israel said Wednesday night that it had begun a \u201clarge-scale wave of strikes\u201d on Beirut\u2019s suburbs after Hezbollah launched what the Israeli military said were \u201cmore than 100\u201d rockets.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n The IDF\u2019s Arabic-speaking spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued what he called an \u201curgent and serious warning\u201d to residents of Beirut\u2019s 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n Just as the IDF released its statement, a Reuters camera scanning the skyline of Beirut caught the flash of an explosion in the city\u2019s 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n The IDF said the strikes come after Hezbollah\u2019s \u201cdeliberate decision to attack Israel on behalf of the Iranian regime.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n On social media, Hezbollah said it had launched \u201cOperation Asf al-Ma\u2019koul,\u201d a phrase derived from a Quranic verse.\n <\/p>\n
\n It refers to the imagery of destruction in the Quranic story of \u201cThe Elephant,\u201d where an army is destroyed by divine intervention, leaving them like \u201ceaten straw.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In a later statement, the militant group said its fighters fired \u201cdozens of rockets\u201d at Israeli towns near the border, describing the attack as retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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 \u201cmildly\u201d injured in northern Israel, according to Magen David Adom, Israel\u2019s national emergency service.\n <\/p>\n
\n CNN\u2019s Joseph Ataman, Avery Schmitz and Michael Rios contributed.\n <\/p>\n
\n This post has been updated with new information.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel said Wednesday night that it had begun a \u201clarge-scale wave of strikes\u201d on Beirut\u2019s suburbs after Hezbollah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-334171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}