Bloody massacre in Beirut ‘changes rules of game’: Iran

This photo shows large plumes of smoke billowing from buildings struck by the Israeli regime in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district on September 27, 2024. (Via social media networks)

Iran’s Embassy in Lebanon has described Israel’s Friday strikes on the outskirts of the capital Beirut as a serious game-changing escalation, warning that the occupying regime will face punishment over the bloody onslaught.

Israeli warplanes carried out more than 30 airstrikes on Friday, targeting residential buildings in the areas of Burj al-Barajneh, Kafaat, Choueifat, Hadath, al-Laylaki, and Mreijeh.

In an intense bombardment, the occupation laid waste to several building blocks in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district under the pretext of striking a depot of missiles belonging to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, with local media reporting upwards of 300 casualties as a result of the aggression.

“Once again, the Israeli regime is committing a bloody massacre, targeting densely populated residential neighborhoods and making false justifications in an attempt to cover up its brutal crime,” the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said in a post on its X account.

“There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represent a serious escalation that changes the rules of the game, and that its perpetrator will be appropriately punished and disciplined.”

In a strong repudiation of the Israeli claims, Hezbollah’s media office issued a statement and said the resistance movement “denies the Israeli occupation’s false claims about the presence of weapons or weapons stores in the civilian buildings it targeted in the southern suburbs of Beirut.”

The latest attacks came as part of the regime’s escalation against Lebanon, which has taken a deadlier turn in recent days, claiming the lives of more than 700 people across the country since Monday.

The new attacks came less than a week after the regime killed 38 people, including three children and seven women as well as Ibrahim Aqil, one of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, in an attack on a residential building in a southern Beirut suburb.

A couple of days earlier, it had also detonated thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkie radios across the country, killing at least 39 people and wounding 3,000 others.

The Lebanese resistance movement has vowed to keep up its retaliatory attacks as long as the Israeli regime continues its Gaza war, which has so far killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.