Beirut's Raouche neighbourhood curves along the Mediterranean like a crescent moon, lined with restaurants, cafes, and hotels that once drew tourists seeking views of the limestone arch rising from the sea. On Sunday morning at 3:30am, a drone tore through that peaceful seaside idyll.
>According to the Sydney Morning Herald,the drone strike was the first within the city limits of Lebanon's capital since Israel-Hezbollah hostilities resumed last week.The Lebanese Health Ministry said an Israeli air raid hit Beirut's city centre, targeting a hotel room in Raouche, with at least four killed and 10 wounded.
The Ramada Plaza was not a military target by conventional measures. It sat in an upmarket tourist hub, far from the Dahiya district where Hezbollah's stronghold sprawls across the southern suburbs. Yet the hotel had become a refuge.The hotel was housing displaced people fleeing the war in southern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs.
Ahmad Sweidan, 73, had brought his granddaughter Fatima, 8, to a fourth-floor room just days earlier, hoping distance would mean safety. According to the original report, Sweidan said he never expected Israel to strike this part of the city when the bombardments had been concentrated elsewhere. Fatima woke to the blast. "I feel an earthquake happened," she told the reporter.
The strike appeared to hit a corner suite on the hotel's fourth floor, with windows shattered and surrounding facade blackened. Debris scattered across the pavement. Nearby buildings trembled.
The Israel Defense Forces said five top commanders in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in the strike, describing them as members of the Quds Force's Palestine and Lebanon corps who were involved in aiding Hezbollah and Hamas with funds and intelligence.An Israeli military source said the strike targeted five senior Quds Force members, including intelligence and finance personnel.
The military's language stressed precision and caution.The military said it took various steps to minimise the risk to civilians, including the use of precision weaponry and aerial surveillance. Yet the result was clear: civilians caught in crossfire in a place they believed was beyond the reach of war.
One man staying across the street, displaced earlier in the week, had three children wounded by the force of the strike who were being treated at a nearby hospital and would need surgery. This is the pattern emerging across Lebanon as the war deepens.
Lebanon says four people were killed in the strike, part of a rapidly rising death toll that has reached 394 people, according to the health ministry on Sunday, including at least 83 children and 42 women. The toll speaks to a campaign that has moved far beyond targeting specific military objectives. It speaks to a conflict consuming civilians along with combatants.
Within hours of the Ramada strike, the impact rippled through the capital.Israel had issued an evacuation order for a swath of Beirut home to more than half a million people.Across the Middle East, at least 230,000 people have been displaced in relation to the ongoing war, including more than 100,000 inside Lebanon, according to the United Nations.
In Raouche, those who thought distance and geography would shield them learned otherwise. The Ramada's windows remain shattered. Families once more scramble to find shelter. And the war, which began a week ago when Hezbollah fired into Israel in response to the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader, shows no signs of slowing. If anything, it is expanding, block by block, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, swallowing the city whole.