By Euan Ward and Hwaida Saad
The morning after an Israeli strike targeted a Hezbollah commander in the suburbs of Beirut, officials in the country sought to reassure the public amid mounting fears of an all-out war.
“My call to the Lebanese is to join hands and demonstrate unity,” said Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, in a statement following an emergency Cabinet meeting Wednesday.
“Lebanon does not want war,” he said.
But those reassurances did not seem to provide much calm. Beirut’s international airport was crammed with people trying to leave the country amid a flurry of suspended flights. Staff members were overwhelmed, luggage belts had stopped working, and lines for passport control stretched through the terminal. Embassies urged their citizens to leave while commercial flights remained available.
Adnan Berro, 61, a father of three and resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs, said he was visiting family elsewhere when the airstrike hit his neighborhood, Haret Hreik, a stronghold of the militant group Hezbollah. “These are innocent victims who have been killed or injured,” he said.
Israel said it had targeted and killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander. The group confirmed Wednesday that Shukr had been inside the building that was struck but said rescue teams were still digging through the rubble looking for victims. Hours after the strike, a senior Hamas official was assassinated in Tehran, Iran, though Israel has not said that it was responsible for that attack.
“I hope the situation will get better,” said Berro, “but I’m anticipating that things are only going to get worse.”
The civilian death toll from the strike continued to rise Wednesday, with Lebanon’s health ministry saying that at least four people, including two children, had been killed and more than 80 others injured.
As the funeral procession for the two children made its way through the streets of suburban Beirut on Wednesday, Maryam Sultan, whose sister-in-law lives in the residential building that was targeted, recounted how a dozen of her family members had been injured.
Sultan and her two children were returning from Quran lessons at the local mosque when the airstrike hit, sending half of the building crashing to the ground. A neighboring building was heavily damaged.
“My children were stepping into the building that was attacked,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. “The house was full. There was the father, the aunts and the children.
“My husband and son are still in the hospital,” she said.
Her mother, Nazha Sultan, took a defiant tone.
“The Israelis are only good with drones. Let them dare to come to Dahieh,” she said, using the Arabic name for Beirut’s southern suburbs.
While touring the scene of the strike Wednesday, Ali Ammar, a Hezbollah lawmaker, said: “The enemy is asking for a war, and we are up for it.”
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