TEL AVIV, Israel, and BEIRUT — Israel's military carried out airstrikes overnight on targets in Lebanon that the military says are linked to a financial institution that undergirds the militant group Hezbollah. Lebanon is assessing the damage.
Late Sunday an Israeli military spokesperson published messages online in Arabic instructing Lebanese civilians to move away from specific buildings that house branches of the bank, called Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
While United Nations representatives said the warnings sparked panic in parts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Israel's foreign minister said 15 buildings were struck and its military would continue to attack Hezbollah.
The U.S. has long sanctioned Al-Qard Al-Hassan, saying it is used to manage finances by Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese militia and political movement that the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.
A senior Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to detail attack plans before they were carried out, on Sunday told reporters that Israel planned the strikes throughout Lebanon against several of the institution’s branches that act like banks to help fund Hezbollah — what the official termed the organization's "economic strongholds."
But the official also acknowledged that while Al-Qard Al-Hassan is used in part to pay Hezbollah fighters and purchase weapons, it has also served hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians — the majority drawn from the country's Shia Muslim communities — who simply used the system for their own banking needs. The intention was to create distrust between Hezbollah and those ordinary Shia banking customers, the official said.
Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, wrote on social media that Al-Qard Al-Hassan was a "microfinance institution" modeled after the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. She said the Lebanese institution "provides small loans to low income individuals against specific assets" — in some cases allowing women to offer their jewelry as collateral, in a country where the mainstream internationally linked banking system has repeatedly collapsed.
Ihab Hamadeh, a member of the Lebanese parliament affiliated with Hezbollah's political wing, insisted that the group did not profit from Al-Qard Al-Hassan. He said the financial institution offers services to all Lebanese consumers and has granted some 5,000 scholarships to university students overseas. "We tell the depositors in Al-Qard Al-Hassan that you will not lose a single penny," he wrote on Telegram.
Israeli military warnings on social media before the strikes informed the residents of specific buildings in southern Beirut and the Bekaa Valley that they were "located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah." Those inside the highlighted buildings were told to evacuate immediately and remain at least 500 meters (547 yards) away from them "for your safety and the safety of your family members."
Some Lebanese news outlets and social media posts subsequently suggested that a hospital in the town of Baalbek had been evacuated due to its proximity to a strike on one Al-Qard Al-Hassan branch. But in a statement Lebanon's health ministry denied that, and said the hospital was operating normally. It explained that following the Israeli threats, several patients had only been moved out of rooms facing the Al-Qard Al-Hassan branch adjacent to the hospital.
"Beirut in flames," Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote on social media. "Hezbollah has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price for its attacks on northern Israel and its rocket fire."
Hezbollah is partially financed and significantly supported by the government of Iran, and Katz said Israeli forces would "keep striking the Iranian proxy until it collapses."
Precise details of fatalities and injuries tied to the strikes overnight into Monday have not yet been confirmed. Lebanon's National News Agency said the strikes on at least one of the financial branches caused damage to other floors in the same building, as well as neighboring buildings, including nearby stores. And in the city of Tyre, the agency reported that "severe damage to surrounding homes" and to a nearby radio station had resulted from the strike on one branch.
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Across Lebanon on Saturday, the country's Health Ministry recorded 16 people killed and 59 wounded people, many of them in the country's south close to Israel's border — bringing the total death toll since the start of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah last October to 2,464.
In northern Israel, the Israeli government's latest figures show a total of 59 people killed and 569 injured over the same period.
A drone that the Iranian state news agency says Hezbollah sent from Lebanon had targeted the family residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the northern city of Caesarea, according to the prime minister’s office. Netanyahu's wife, Sara, described it in a social media post as an "attempt to kill the prime minister of Israel," and "an attack on all of us — on the people of Israel."
U.S. presidential envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut Monday to meet with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
For months, Hochstein has been tasked by the White House with calming the Israel-Lebanon conflict. But ahead of his arrival in the Lebanese capital, Israel's military had announced fresh ground raids in southern Lebanon, killing fighters and dismantling anti-tank missiles, RPG launchers and other explosives, according to an Israeli military statement. Two dozen missiles crossed the border from Lebanon into northern Israel Monday morning after around 200 did so on Sunday, according to the Israeli military.
Daniel Estrin reported from Tel Aviv, Israel; Arezou Rezvani from Beirut; Willem Marx from London.
Jawad Rizkallah contributed reporting from Beirut.
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