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Beirut (AP) – Israeli military planes conducted several low-flying flights over Beirut, while reconnaissance drones also boiled on Sunday morning in what has become a daily occurrence.
Israel regularly violates Lebanon’s airspace, often to carry out attacks on neighboring Syria. On Christmas night, Israeli planes flew into the wee hours of the night, terrorizing Beirut residents who are no strangers to these flights. They were followed by Israeli attacks on Syria.
The frequency of low-flying warplanes over the capital has intensified in the past two weeks, making residents nervous as tensions rise in the region in the last days of President Donald’s administration. Trump.
“When the drone comes out, the warplanes come. When the warplanes leave, the drones return. They’ve seen us in our PCs, filmed us in our PCs, and supervised us in our PCs. Now what, ”Twitter user Areej_AAH quipped.
“Of all the types of panic I experienced in life in Beirut, the panic that accompanies Israeli warplanes flying so low in Beirut is very special,” Tude Rudeynah Baalbaky, who said she brought back memories of the 2006 war with Israel.
Israel rarely comments on these reports.
Many fear a conflict may erupt in the area before Trump leaves office in retaliation for the U.S. assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq last year or for thwarting the efforts of Joe Biden’s incoming administration to negotiate with Iran.
On Friday, the Lebanese army registered an Israeli flight that lasted nearly six hours in the south of the country.
A Twitter account tracking the movement of aircraft in the Middle East, Intel_Sky, has recorded dozens of Israeli planes flying over Lebanon since the beginning of the year, including attack drills. Intel_Sky called Sunday’s flights “attack drills.”
At one point this summer, the Lebanese army said Israel violated its airspace almost 30 times in two days, flying reconnaissance drones and planes into Lebanese territory.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon says Israel enters Lebanese airspace on a daily basis, violating UN resolutions and the country’s sovereignty.
Between June and October 2020, UNIFIL recorded a daily average of 12.63 airspace violations, with a total of 61 hours and 51 minutes of flight, a significant increase over the previous four months. Drones accounted for approximately 95% of violations, UNIFIL said.
Technically Israel and Lebanon are at war. Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group backed by Iran, is a sworn enemy of Israel and the two have had a series of clashes, including a large-scale war in 2006.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a year-end interview, said Israel’s efforts to curb its group’s ability to acquire precision-guided missiles have failed. He boasted that Hezbollah now has twice as many missiles as last year.
Israel has in recent months expressed concern that Hezbollah is trying to establish production facilities to manufacture precision-guided missiles.