Israel's military announced Sunday it will now take aim at the Lebanon-based Hezbollah's financial arm and plans to attack a "large number of targets" in the coming hours in Beirut and elsewhere. Explosions began in Beirut's southern suburbs about an hour later. An Israeli military spokesman said that evacuation warnings were being issued and that "anyone who will be near the sites used to finance Hezbollah's terrorist activity is required to stay away from them immediately." The first warnings affected southern Beirut and the eastern Bekaa valley, the AP reports.
The strikes will target al-Qard al-Hassan "all over Lebanon," a senior Israeli intelligence official said. Al-Qard al-Hassan is a unit in Hezbollah used to pay operatives of the Iran-backed militant group and help buy arms, the official said. The registered nonprofit, sanctioned by both the US and Saudi Arabia, provides financial services and is also used by ordinary Lebanese. Its name in Arabic means "the benevolent loan," per the AP, and Hezbollah has used it to entrench its support among the Shiite population in a country where state and financial institutions have failed in recent years.
Israel's announcement came a day after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called civilian casualties in Lebanon "far too high" in the Israel-Hezbollah fighting and urged Israel to scale back its strikes, especially in and around Beirut. Iran supports the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, and the US is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents indicating that Israel was moving military assets into place for a military strike in response to Iran's ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1, according to three US officials. Israeli strikes on homes in the northern Gaza Strip overnight and into Sunday left at least 87 people dead or missing, the territory's Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas target.
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