Lebanese people feared it was coming and all the caveated comments from Israel and the US about “limited operations” and “localised, targeted attacks” don’t take away from their realisation their country has been invaded.
“It’s an infringement of our country. Of course it is,” the Lebanese information minister told me early this morning.
And the head of the country’s disaster management team, Nasser Yassin, who is also the minister for environment, told me the Israeli warnings to “evacuate areas for your own safety” were an attempt to “professionalise genocide”.
Latest: Israel sends ground forces into Lebanon
“They think they are being somehow professional to issue these warnings but just because you give a warning before genocide, still means it’s genocide,” the minister said.
The country’s caretaker government is not only worried, but also frustrated and angry at what it has seen barrelling towards Lebanon at breakneck speed and been unable to stop.
The Lebanese economy minister told Sky’s Yalda Hakim a few days ago the caretaker government believed it would reach some sort of agreement to prevent all-out war (and one must assume this includes an agreement not to invade), yet within hours, the Israeli authorities had killed the Hezbollah leader in Beirut’s southern suburbs, was hitting the Bekaa Valley and mounting multiple airstrikes on southern cities.
Days on from that, the Israeli scope seemed to have extended even further – this time hitting a building in central Beirut for the first time since 2006.
The Israeli military’s 98th Division – who were a short while ago inside Gaza – are now storming through south Lebanon with such “fierce fighting”, according to Israeli forces’ announcements, that it has issued another wide-ranging “warning”.
The Israeli’s Arabic spokesman said via X no vehicles should move from north of the country to south of the Litani River.
This is being understood to signal that any vehicles moving south – but also maybe even moving anywhere in that huge area – may well be targeted by Israeli jets.
Certainly those civilians in some of the large population areas down south, such as the city of Tyre, will probably be extremely fearful of moving through that whole area just in case.
The area south of the Litani River has a strong Hezbollah presence and from there, it’s been launching most of its attacks into Israel – but it’s home to hundreds of thousands of people who usually live in that area, an area which is approximately 850 square kilometres.
‘This is a literal massacre’
In the hours before the invasion and Israeli troops breaking through Lebanon’s southern border, we were at the site of the deadliest single airstrike in Lebanon in nearly a year of blood and violence.
A huge mass of rubble is what’s left of two residential blocks packed with families and displaced people in the village of Ain el Deleb.
“This is a literal massacre,” said one civil defence worker who was caked in dust after a night of digging and pulling survivors and bodies out of the broken buildings.
When we turned up and identified ourselves to the Hezbollah group at the site, as a British media crew, there were immediate angry shouts of “no Britannia” and “get out Britain”.
It cannot be underestimated how much anger and resentment and sheer paranoia there is now towards the West – primarily the US, UK and others in Europe who are viewed as either enabling Israel to carry out its attacks and invasion or powerless to stop them.
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“We don’t want anyone to fight our war,” one of the neighbours, Tarek Kaddoura, told us.
“We can do the fighting on our own. We just want those big countries to stop supplying Israel with weapons because this is the result.”
He gestured to the collapsed buildings behind him. “This is the result of those supplies.”
‘They want to scare us’
Entire families are being wiped out.
Seven members of one family were buried at just one funeral in Ain el Deleb.
The death toll so far from the two collapsed residential blocks is 45 – another first in a litany of bloody firsts – making the village of Ain el Deleb top of the bloody league of suffering the most deaths in a single Israeli attack.
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A teenager who was inside the residential blocks in the village when the Israeli bombs hit told us of the panic and chaos.
“My sister and I ran to the door,” Zeynab, 19, told us from her hospital bed.
“She was screaming so much and I was trying to calm her.”
Then another bomb hit and she lost consciousness. She was pulled out by rescuers, but her shoulder is now broken in two places. Her left hip and left leg are also fractured.
Her face is still red from cuts. Her body is broken, but her spirit is strong.
“The Israelis targeting that building only means they want to scare us,” she said in a quivering voice.
“They target civilians. But you should know we’re not afraid. They can’t scare us and even if try to kill us and maim us, we will keep fighting.”
