Vital Beirut Airport Road Bombed In Heaviest Night Of Israeli Strikes To Date

Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer Beirut through the overnight hours and into Sunday, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) calling them “pinpoint” attacks, but which has left Lebanese civilians in the capital in a state of panic. Financial Times and others have called it the heaviest night of bombing on the Lebanese capital to date.

Large fireballs were observed overnight, and towering smoke plumes in the dawn hours, as the IDF said it also struck multiple weapons depots and Hezbollah infrastructure across the country. The IDF has said it has hit 150 Hezbollah targets in the past 24 hours, including a building near a key road leading to Lebanon’s international airport.

Amazingly, the Lebanese national carrier Middle East Airlines (MEA) has continued to fly passenger planes into and out of Beirut, even as Israel jets are dropping bombs.

“We just saw another plane take off even though air strikes have happened very close to the Rafic Hariri International airport,” an Al Jazeera correspondent writes. “The only airline that is still operating in and out of Lebanon is the local airline. They have refused to shut down the airport despite the threat that they face every single day as they have over the past two weeks.”

One Australian eyewitness says she was sitting on a plane which was readying to take off at the moment the major bombing near the airport unfolded. “While we were sitting in the airplane just before takeoff there was a lot of bombing, like around 500 meters next to the airport, and as we were about to take off we heard a lot of bombing,” she told Reuters.