Israeli video shows Lebanon home stuffed with weapons
TEL AVIV — The Israeli military released a video Thursday showing what it said are piles of weapons stored inside a house in south Lebanon.
The military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, appears in the video, saying it was filed in a “Shia village in Lebanon near the Israeli border.”
He said the weapons show how Hezbollah has turned homes into military “bases” as part of a planned raid on northern Israel and that the army was going house to house to dismantle the terrorist’s group capabilities.
Israeli airstrikes hit different areas of central Beirut on Thursday evening.
The attack came the same day as Israeli forces fired on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and wounded two of them, prompting Italy’s Defense Ministry to summon Israel’s ambassador in protest.
“We are deeply concerned about reports that Israeli forces fired on two positions and a tower used by U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said Thursday. “We reached out immediately to our Israeli counterparts about it, and pressed them for more details.”
The statement said that although Israel is conducting operations in the area to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure that could threaten Israelis, “it is critical that they not threaten U.N. peacekeepers’ safety and security.”
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthi terrorists attacked a Liberian-flagged chemical tanker in the Red Sea, authorities said.
The Olympic Spirit tanker in the Red Sea had been skirting the coast of East Africa when it found itself struck first by a projectile that damaged the vessel, but sparked no fire and caused no injuries, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.