Hezbollah and Human Shields

After sending a warning to Lebanese civilians on Monday morning, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched a major series of strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, totalling around 1,300 by the end of the day.

Those strikes immediately drew the attention of the international news organisations, who reported on jammed roads as tens of thousands of civilians fled the southern areas of the country. Despite so many people fleeing, the death toll of Hezbollah members and others rose to nearly 500 by the end of the day.

Benjamin Netanyahu issued a message emphasising that Israel is not at war with the Lebanese people, but with Hezbollah, and urged the people of Lebanon to heed the warnings issued by the IDF and “get out of harm’s way.”

On Tuesday morning the IDF issued another update in which they showed more evidence of the extraordinary measures that Hezbollah has adopted over recent years to embed weaponry within civilian communities, even hiding long-range rockets inside people’s homes.

In addition to showing those preparations by Hezbollah, the update featured several examples of secondary explosions that showed IDF strikes were hitting weapons storage locations. In one case, the Israeli strike prompted a rocket in the building to launch and strike another building nearby.

This shortened version of that IDF update, with added context, was posted by the Sun: