FADEL ITANI/AFP via Getty Images
A series of airstrikes rocked Lebanon late Sunday after Israel warned it would target locations that allegedly help Iran finance the battered Hezbollah militant group.
Lebanese state media said multiple branches of the nonprofit Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial association were hit, including near Beirut’s international airport, according to the Times of Israel.
Photos showed large fires on the ground and huge plumes of smoke rising into the night sky.
AFP said a video feed from the airport appeared to show it operating as usual and a correspondent reported seeing planes flying past the smoke and landing there.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported 11 strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs and others in the Bekaa Valley, including one that hit a building that was formerly used by Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
Unverified videos posted on social media appeared to show a mid-rise building crumbling to the ground in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, the Times of Israel said.
The attacks came shortly after Israel’s military issued evacuation orders for 22 locations in Lebanon.
“I stress here, that whoever is near the sites that are used to finance Hezbollah’s terror activity is required to distance themselves from them immediately,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said, according to the Times of Israel.
Hagari said Israel planned to hit “many sites in the coming hours, and more sites overnight.”
“In the coming days, we will reveal how Iran finances Hezbollah’s terror activity using civilian institutions and associations as a cover,” he added.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan, founded by Hezbollah in 1983, is a quasi-banking institution that operates without a government license and serves as the main source of the militant group’s cash, according to the U.S. government-funded Voice of America.
The airstrikes came a day after Hezbollah reportedly sent a drone to attack Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vacation home in the coastal town of Caesarea but neither he nor his wife were there.
