Israel attacks the heart of Beirut for the first time, killing three leaders of the Palestinian front

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claims that three of its leaders were killed during an Israeli attack on a building in the Cola district of Beirut. The armed action took place in the early hours of Monday and is believed to be Israel's first bombing inside the Lebanese capital since the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Since the start of clashes with the Shiite militia last October, nearly a year ago, the Defense Forces had attacked the southern suburbs of the city, Hezbollah's stronghold, but not an inner district.

The alarm was raised in the early hours of the morning when emergency services in the capital were mobilized as videos began circulating showing a column of smoke rising from the top of an apartment building. The tower showed a hole where supposedly the Israeli army had directed a drone to hit an apartment occupied by alleged terrorists.

Initially, it was speculated that the troops were targeting an Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya cell, which later denied this. This organization is part of a much larger one, the Muslim Brotherhood, and in recent months has participated alongside Hezbollah in launching rockets into Israel, according to its National Security Agency. However, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine eventually acknowledged the death of its three militants.

In the early hours of Monday morning, rescue teams continued to search through the rubble. It is not ruled out that a fourth fatality may have emerged from this attack on this predominantly Sunni Muslim neighborhood. Lebanese security sources explained how hundreds of citizens stayed up all night after leaving their homes and gathered on hospital grounds seeking refuge for fear of further bombings.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that since October 8, a day after Hamas's massacre against kibbutzim near Gaza, where more than 1,200 people were killed, clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have resulted in 1,640 deaths. Among them are 104 children and 194 women while injuries approach 9,000. The Defense Forces' fight against the Shiite militia, an ally of Hamas, has intensified dramatically this September, claiming a thousand lives according to the ministry.

The same sources claim that this number is possibly much lower than reality since there is an indeterminate number of missing persons and dozens of bodies "buried under rubble." Jihad Saadeh, director of Rafik Hariri Hospital in Beirut, says that the health network is prepared to manage mass casualty assistance from Israeli bombings, although he acknowledges to international media that "the situation is taking a crazy turn" reminiscent of "the civil war and the 2006 war" against Israel.

Beirut is not the only part of Lebanon ravaged by nighttime terror attacks. The Defense Forces acknowledge that their planes attacked dozens of locations in the Bekaa Valley on Monday night, where military spokesmen say they destroyed Hezbollah rocket launchers and arsenals. The Palestinian group Hamas has just issued a statement saying that its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, was killed along with several relatives in one of these attacks in southern Lebanon.