Israel Strikes Beirut Dahieh as Thousands Flee; Hezbollah Stronghold Under Attack
Israel ordered strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs — Dahieh — on Monday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Hezbollah stronghold would be targeted in response to Hezbollah attacks on Israeli positions. Thousands have fled Dahieh. The Beirut strikes followed Sunday’s Israeli capture of Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon and the IDF push beyond the Litani River through Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki areas. Hezbollah showered northern Israel with rockets and drones in response.
Dahieh is Hezbollah’s political-administrative heartland and houses the movement’s leadership infrastructure. Israeli strikes on Dahieh in 2024 killed Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and effectively decapitated the movement’s political wing; Monday’s strikes are the first direct Israeli targeting of Dahieh since the post-Nasrallah ceasefire framework was supposed to lock in. The Beaufort Ridge + Wadi al-Saluki + Litani River line represents the operational completion of the ground-control objective Israeli Northern Command set after the September 2024 Hezbollah decapitation operation. The combination of the Iran-talks suspension, the renewed US-Iran strikes and the Israeli Beirut strikes is the most aggressive Israeli-US-Iran triangulated escalation since the early phase of the war.