Lebanese Journalist Hit by Israeli Airstrike During Live Coverage, Video Surfaces

New Delhi: Amid escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, a video is going viral on social media showing Lebanese journalist Fadi Boudiya being thrown off balance during an Israeli air strike. The editor-in-chief of Miraya International Network was broadcasting live when a missile struck dangerously close to his window, resulting in shattered walls and glass. In the footage, Boudiya can be seen screaming and scrambling for safety amid the chaos of the explosion. Reports confirmed that he suffered injuries due to the blast. 

Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah traded fire again on Tuesday — including a new Israeli airstrike on Beirut — as the death toll from a massive Israeli bombardment climbed to nearly 560 people and thousands fled from southern Lebanon with the two sides on the brink of all-out war.

Displaced families slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. With hotels quickly booked to capacity or rooms priced beyond the means of many families, those who did not find shelter slept in their cars, in parks or along the seaside.

Issa Baydoun fled the village of Shihine in southern Lebanon when it came under bombing and came to Beirut in a convoy of cars with his extended family. They slept in the vehicles on the side of the road after discovering that the shelters were full.

“We struggled a lot on the road just to get here,” he said. Baydoun rejected Israel's contention that it hit only military targets.

“We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them,” he said. “That's why we left our homes, to protect our children.” Well-wishers offered up empty apartments or rooms in their houses in social media posts. Volunteers set up a kitchen to cook meals for the displaced at an empty Beirut gas station that first became a hub for volunteers after the city's devastating 2020 port explosion.

In the eastern city of Baalbek, the state-run National News Agency reported that lines formed at bakeries and gas stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of another round of strikes on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the border crossing with Syria saw massive traffic jams as a result of people escaping from Lebanon to the neighbouring country.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it launched missiles overnight and in the morning at eight sites in Israel, including an explosives factory in Zichron Yaakov, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the border.

The Israeli military said Tuesday morning that 55 rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, setting fires and damaging buildings. Military officials said they carried out dozens of airstrikes on Hezbollah targets, including on a cell that fired rockets overnight, and that tanks and artillery struck targets near the border.

Israeli military officials said they carried out a “targeted strike” in Beirut without giving details. Lebanon's National News Agency said “a number of people” were wounded by the strike, which destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building. It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed.

Galilee Medical Center, a northern Israel hospital, said that two patients arrived with minor head injuries from a rocket falling near their car. Several others were being treated for light wounds from running to shelters and traffic accidents when alarms sounded.

The renewed exchange came after Monday's barrages racked up the highest death toll in any single day in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006.