LEBANON’s Health Ministry said at least one person was killed and five wounded as Israel carried out at least 17 strikes on Beirut’s suburbs overnight.
Israel’s attack levelled six buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb of Laylaki in what Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Beirut described as a “very violent night” of strikes that began without warning.
Also, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has said Israel’s declaration that six Al Jazeera journalists are members of armed groups “sounds like a death sentence” and has called for their protection.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has said it is aware of the accusations against the Al Jazeera reporters, but highlighted that Israel has “repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence”.
Meanwhile, The US defence secretary said he had not seen evidence of a cash- and gold-filled Hezbollah bunker underneath a hospital in Beirut, as claimed by the Israeli military this week.
“We have not seen evidence of that at this moment. But, you know, we will continue to collaborate with our Israeli counterparts to gain better fidelity on exactly what they are looking at,” Austin told reporters in Rome.
The Sahel hospital’s director Fadi Alameh, a Lebanese lawmaker with the Shia Amal Movement party, told the Reuters news agency Israel was making false and slanderous claims. The hospital, located in the southern Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, was evacuated on Tuesday over fears Israeli forces would target it.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel last month, commissioned the bunker under the Sahel hospital, designing the underground complex for lengthy stays.
The Sahel hospital in Beirut, which the Israeli military bombed on Monday, was not “a legitimate target”, says Omar Nashabe, a criminal justice analyst and a former human rights adviser to the Lebanese government.
The targeting of a hospital with civilians inside is a “war crime”, Nashabe told Al Jazeera.
“It is the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to look into these crimes and prosecute those who actually commit these crimes,” he said.
