BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than two days after a massive Israeli airstrike that killed the leader of the Hezbollah terror group, smoke is still rising from the smoldering wreckage in Lebanon’s Beirut.
Israel said the Friday night strike targeted a meeting at an underground Hezbollah compound. The blasts leveled multiple high-rise apartment towers in the densely populated, predominantly Shiite southern suburb of Dahiyeh, a known Hezbollah stronghold.
Hezbollah confirmed in a statement Saturday that its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in the strike — a huge blow for the Iran-backed group he had led for 32 years.
On Sunday, Associated Press journalists saw smoke over the rubble as people flocked to the site, some to check on what’s left of their homes, others to pay respects and pray, and others simply to see the destruction.
Residents of Beirut heard up to 10 explosions following the Friday strike that targeted an area greater than a city block, reducing several residential buildings to a jumble of pancaked concrete and twisted steel. The buildings sank into the ground, leaving a cleared-out area nearly the size of a football field.
Dozens of bunker-busting bombs were dropped by the fighter jets on Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut in the attack, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
According to an analyst cited by The New York Times, the eight F-15I jets were equipped with at least 15 2,000-pound munitions with an American-made precision guidance system that attaches to bombs.
Onlookers at the site Sunday clambered over large slabs of concrete, surrounded by high piles of twisted metal and wreckage. Several craters, likely used by rescuers to penetrate under the site of the explosion, were visible, some of them apparently up to 30 meters (100 feet) deep.
A few Hezbollah workers were using a bulldozer to excavate around one of the craters, some of them apparently dug by rescuers to reach the dead. State security and investigators were nowhere to be seen.
The IDF said Sunday that more than 20 Hezbollah operatives were killed in the massive airstrike in Beirut, naming several, including Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, who survived a previous assassination attempt days earlier.
Some people on the scene Sunday said their relatives were still missing.
A woman wearing the black head-to-toe robe known as the chador stood on one side, reading from the Islamic holy book, the Quran, as a group of bystanders sobbed. One man collapsed in tears after seeing the immense destruction.
“Ya Sayyed, Ya Sayyed!” he cried, his head resting against a wall, as he referred to Nasrallah by his honorific title.
“Our morale is high and the struggle shall continue,” said Ali Rahhal, 30. “From here, from the heart of Dahiyeh, we say ‘labbayka ya, Nasrallah’,” he said. The Arabic phrase, which means “at your service, Nasrallah,” was often chanted by supporters at Hezbollah rallies.