Israel has landed a series of strikes on the city in recent days, expanding its offensive in an assault that sparked panic.
Throughout Sunday night, the Israeli military hit bank branches across Lebanon to target Hezbollah’s finances.
Hundreds of residents in Lebanon’s capital and its surrounding suburbs were also forced to flee their homes after the Israel Defense Forces issued a string of evacuation orders, with blasts ringing out shortly afterward.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari warned that the evacuation orders for residents of Beirut and other areas of Lebanon were issued ahead of strikes targeting buildings he said were being “used to finance Hezbollah’s terror activities.”
Officials at a hospital in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut known as a Hezbollah stronghold, told NBC News they had evacuated the medical facility after Israel claimed a Hezbollah cash bunker was under the site.
The Israeli military alleged that Hezbollah has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold stashed in a bunker built under the Sahel General Hospital, a charge which the facility’s director denied.
However, the IDF said it would not attack the hospital directly, but the medical facility’s director, Dr. Fadi Alami, told NBC News that officials still moved to evacuate the hospital.
