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.

"There was a lot of kids frightened but thank God, like, we know we're out of that place now and, like, all we can do is just pray for that situation, pray for the people there that don't have the opportunity to leave like we did," the eyewitness continued.

The FT has confirmed of last night's strikes, "Targets included a building near the road to Beirut’s airport, where the strikes set off huge fires. Smoke was still rising from the area in the morning."

The Lebanese health ministry has announced that Saturday's strikes killed 23 people and wounded an additional 93. It did not disclose how many were civilians and how many combatants.

The bombing of one of the capital's key airport access roads could impact evacuations:

Some American citizens and dual nationals in Lebanon have complained they feel 'abandoned' by the US State Department amid laggardly efforts at facilitating people's exit.

They have accused their government of favoring citizens in Israel as opposed to those currently under the bombs in Lebanon. According to The Intercept:

After Israel dropped more than 80 bombs, including American-made 2,000-lb bombs, on residential buildings in a suburb of Beirut, Hana Bechara, one of 86,000 U.S. citizens who live in Lebanon, decided it was time to leave. 

Bechara and many other Americans stuck in Lebanon have contrasted the State Department’s responses to the sense of urgency and level of assistance Americans in Israel received following the October 7 attacks. Within several days of the attacks, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem offered American citizens prearranged charter flights and boat rides to leave the country. 

Photos and footage from the ground have confirmed that last night's bombings came very close to the international airport...

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has continued targeting the major Israeli port city of Haifa, shooting over 110 rockets on northern Israel on Saturday alone.

The IDF says further that another 30 missiles were fired in an overnight barrage at Kiryat Shmona, with the country's anti-air interceptors continuing to be highly active. It has continued to call for Lebanese villages in the south, in the zone of heavy fighting, to urgently evacuate dozens of kilometers to the north.