The video shows powerful explosions in a Lebanese border village

Issued: 04/11/2024 – 5:20 p.mChanged: 04/11/2024 – 5:18 p.m

1 min

A video that was widely shared on the Internet on Monday showed more than a dozen simultaneous explosions that ripped through Mais el Jabal and reduced houses to ashes.

Similar aerial scenes were filmed in several border villages, including Mhaybib and Odaiseh, after Israel sent ground troops into southern Lebanon in late September.

Videos circulating on the Internet show houses covering green hills crumpled in a cloud of gray dust.

Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure near the border in an effort to push the Iran-backed group away from the border and allow its residents to return to northern Israel.

According to the town’s mayor, Abdul-Monem Choukair, a video from Mais al-Jabal taken on Monday showed powerful explosions outside the village’s vacated hospital.

The area has been hit repeatedly since Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire last October.

“Seventy percent of Mais al-Jebal has been destroyed,” the mayor said, adding that “the goal of the Israeli enemy is systematic destruction.”

Choukair said four people, aged between 85 and 90, were trapped in Mais el-Jabal awaiting rescue.

According to Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA), Israeli forces blew up buildings in at least seven border villages last month.

Israel’s Channel 12 aired footage last month showing one of the anchors blowing up a building while surrounded by soldiers in the village of Aita al-Shaab.

Lebanon’s National Human Rights Commission said the “campaign of extermination carried out by the Israeli army in southern Lebanon is a war crime.”

Between October 2023 and October 2024, “sites were wantonly and systematically destroyed in at least eight Lebanese villages,” based on satellite images and videos posted by Israeli soldiers on social media.

© 2024 AFP