An overnight airstrike on southern Lebanon by Israel is being called one of the single deadliest attacks since the daily tit-for-tat exchange of fire began last October. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health announced the devastating attack killed at least ten people including “a woman and her two children” – and that five others were wounded, two critically. Some of the deceased were Syrian refugees.

While Lebanon says that a residential building was hit, Israel’s military maintains that its air force struck a weapons warehouse run by Hezbollah about seven miles from the Israeli border, in Nabatiyeh.

Structures destroyed by Israeli airstrike in Nabatiyeh, via AP.

Al Jazeera says that some kind of factory building was struck in the attack, but that there was a residential floor with families and employees living there.

“We are a well-known family in the area. We have no political affiliation and are not aligned to any political party. We are concerned only with our business and livelihood,” Hussein Tahmaz, the factory owner, told Al Jazeera. He rejected that Hezbollah used it for weapons storage.

Hezbollah appeared to quickly retaliate, with Israel’s military conforming “approximately 55 projectiles” being fired into northern Israel on Saturday, resulting in no injuries.

However, a separate attack resulted in a soldier being severely injured and another lightly wounded after a projectile from Lebanon struck 

Meanwhile, international diplomats have been scrambling, talking to both sides in an effort to avoid all-out war, which still looms. For at least a month now, there has been a greater urgency of countries to get their foreign nationals out: 

Many foreign nationals are gone, heeding the advice of their governments. Plenty of Lebanese have fled too. Others cannot tear themselves away – like the 30-year-old chef of a hip café (Beirut has too many of these to count). She is tattooed and candid but prefers not to be named.

“Living in Beirut is like being in a toxic relationship you can’t escape,” she tells me.

“I am emotionally attached. I have family abroad, and I could leave, but I don’t want to. We live day to day. And we joke about the situation.”

In the next breath she admits business has suffered, and she has post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s like a cold war for us,” she says. She is expecting a hotter one but hopes it will be short.

Lebanon’s economy had already for the last couple years been in free-fall, with a severe banking crisis and runaway inflation, and with common Lebanese blocked from accessing their own savings by local banks.

At least 9 people killed in an Israeli warplane attack on Wadi Al-Kfour in Nabatieh. There are children among those killed. pic.twitter.com/aiuVjumtg2

— Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) August 17, 2024

Israel has warned that if all-out war breaks out it will send not just Hezbollah but all of Lebanon back to the “stone age”. Many Western carriers have for weeks suspended service to both Beirut and Tel Aviv, citing safety concerns.