The Israeli army launched a bombardment on Tuesday night in Lebanon, located in the city of Sidon, and killed at least 13 people, according to the latest record from the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
Information from the site of the attack indicates that Civil Defense teams are working to rescue multiple people missing under the rubble. Israeli troops and their Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, had announced in different statements an attack in the area where they claim that Hamas hosted a training camp. In a tweet, this spokesperson stated that his country will attack members of the militia “wherever they are.”
Lebanese media indicate that the attack occurred on a warehouse with bedrooms and offices in Ein el Helwe, one of the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon where tens of thousands of people live in buildings that grow vertically in a small space, which means that any bombing could have massive casualties.
“The army has attacked terrorists operating inside a Hamas training complex in the Ein el Helwe area,” announced Adraee, the spokesman for the Israeli troops in Arabic, without providing evidence to support his claims. The statement added that the militants in the area “were planning attacks against Israel,” and that the bombardment that has been targeted against them has been preceded by measures to limit the damage to the civilian population, such as “the use of precision munitions or aerial reconnaissance.”
In a statement, Hamas denounced what it considers “a savage attack against the defenseless Palestinian people and against the sovereignty of Lebanon.” He has also criticized the Israeli statements as “authentic fabrications and lies that seek to justify criminal aggression,” and has assured that “there are no military facilities in the refugee camps in Lebanon.”
The minutes after the bombing have plunged the Ein el Helwe camp, located about 40 kilometers from the border with Israel, into chaos. Groups of residents have spontaneously taken to the streets to protest the attack, while Israeli drones continued to fly over the city’s alleys and Civil Defense teams persisted in their attempts to find living bodies among the destruction.
The Israeli operation takes place hours after the Palestinian organization rejected the disarmament in Gaza demanded by Monday night. “The Israeli army is working against the terrorist roots of Hamas in Lebanon,” the military spokesperson concluded: “and will continue to forcefully attack Hamas agents wherever they operate.”
The Government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah reached a ceasefire in November last year, but Israeli troops have since been opening fire on Lebanese territory almost daily without anyone responding from Lebanese soil, causing, according to the United Nations, the death of more than 100 civilians and the displacement of 80,000 people.
According to the Israeli version, the Jewish army is forced to launch these attacks to prevent the rearmament of non-state armed actors at odds with Israel – such as Hezbollah or Hamas – given the alleged inability or unwillingness of the Lebanese Executive to carry out the disarmament of the militias, something to which it has committed.
Now, the magnitude of the attack in Ein el Helwe – which has no comparison with the hostilities that have occurred over the last year – provokes fear in Lebanon that Israeli military pressure will settle into a new, even more violent phase. Since the start of the conflict in October 2023, Israeli troops had only attacked that refugee camp once, and it was to eliminate in October 2024 a commander of a Palestinian militia other than Hamas who survived – but not his son.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has accused Israel this November in recent weeks in response to his request to establish negotiations to resolve the situation in the border area, where Israeli soldiers continue to occupy at least five areas. “Almost a year after the truce came into force [en Líbano]Israel has spared no effort to show its refusal to establish an agreement [político] between both countries,” the president protested on November 6 after a wave of attacks that raised fears of the resumption of an open war. “Your message has been received,” he concluded.
