Israel’s bombing of Lebanon is the ‘most intense air campaign’ outside Gaza in 20 years

(CNN)- Israel has bombed Lebanon with unprecedented airstrikes in less than three weeks, killing more than 1,400 people, injuring nearly 7,500 and forcing more than 1 million from their homes, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Have been displaced.

The bombing, which Israel says targeted Hezbollah strongholds in the country, is the “most intense air campaign” outside Gaza in the past two decades, according to conflict monitoring group Airwars.

Emily Tripp, director of the Britain-based group, told CNN that Israeli attacks “are happening at a level and intensity that Israel’s own allies would not have done in the last 20 years.” They pointed to the military operation, where, at the height of the battle for Raqqa – the terrorist group’s de facto capital – 500 munitions were deployed in a single day.

Over the course of two days, on 24 and 25 September, Israeli forces said they used 2,000 weapons and carried out 3,000 attacks.

By comparison, during most of the US’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, except for the first year of the invasion, where about 6,500 strikes were conducted, the US conducted fewer than 3,000 strikes annually, according to Airwars data analyzed by CNN.

“This is not normal,” Tripp said of the scale and size of Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. Although Israel’s air campaign is highly “unusual”, Tripp said its attacks on Gaza last year – where about 60% of buildings are estimated to have been damaged by Israeli strikes – have normalized such major attacks.

Israel says it takes measures to minimize harm to civilians, such as making phone calls and sending text messages to residents in buildings designated for attack. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International say such warnings do not absolve Israel of its responsibilities under international humanitarian law to limit harm to civilians.

CNN previously reported on Israel’s devastating use of approximately 907 kilograms of bombs, which experts say are responsible for the high death toll in Gaza and which appear to have been used in the air strikes that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. Was deployed. Massive munitions have hit civilian infrastructure in Gaza and now Lebanon.

A CNN team in Beirut this week found that many Israeli attacks came without warning. Israel sends evacuation orders by text even at midnight, when most people are sleeping.

As a result, the death toll in Lebanon continues to rise, with a fifth of its population now displaced.

There have been continuous exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel since October 8, a day after a Hamas-led attack on Israel, which left more than 1,200 dead and 250 taken hostage. Iran-backed extremist group Hezbollah has said it will not stop attacking Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli bombardments have killed more than 41,000 people in the past year, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Israel has launched nearly 9,000 strikes in Lebanon since October 8. According to ACLED data, Hezbollah carried out 1,500 attacks in the same period.

On September 25, Israel escalated its air campaign with intensified attacks in several parts of Lebanon, marking the deadliest day for Lebanon since the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, and a turning point in the current conflict.

While most of Israel’s airstrikes over the past year have targeted southern Lebanon, Israel has also stepped up its attacks on Beirut in recent weeks, with several airstrikes south of the capital destroying residential and densely populated civilian areas. Is done.

At least seven Hezbollah commanders and senior officials have been killed in a wave of attacks in recent weeks, the biggest blow to the group since its formation in the early 1980s.

Those attacks are mainly concentrated in the Dahiyah neighborhood in the south of the city, a densely populated residential area and a Hezbollah stronghold. It was here that the leader of the extremist group was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his underground bunker on September 27.

However, as Israel’s campaign to disarm Hezbollah continues, civilians are paying the highest price, including 127 children who have died in less than three weeks, according to the Health Ministry.

On September 23 alone, at least 558 people died, including 50 children and 94 women.

Women and girls are also particularly affected by displacement caused by air strikes, according to Lebanon’s country director at humanitarian agency CARE International. Michael Adams said about half the people in emergency shelters for displaced people in Lebanon are children, and the facilities are operating beyond capacity.

Now, Israel is attacking downtown Beirut, not its suburbs, with airstrikes for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Meanwhile, a quarter of the Lebanese territory is now under evacuation orders from Israeli forces as Israel stepped up its ground campaign in the south, displacing its residents more than 30 miles north of their homes .

CNN’s Allegra Goodwin, Iyad Kordi and Sophie Warnes contributed to this report.