Israeli warplanes struck Dahieh — Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs — with at least 12 separate explosions in the early hours of 2 March. Lebanese health authorities reported 31 people killed and 149 wounded.
The strikes came hours after Hezbollah launched rockets and drones into northern Israel, framing the attacks as vengeance for Khamenei's assassination. On the conflict's opening day, Hezbollah's non-activation was one of the few stabilising signals amid the chaos. That restraint lasted approximately 48 hours before collapsing entirely.
Dahieh has absorbed Israeli bombardment before. In the 2006 war, Israeli air power flattened entire residential blocks, displacing an estimated one million Lebanese civilians. The November 2024 ceasefire — negotiated after Israel killed Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah and conducted a two-month air and limited ground campaign — was designed to prevent this recurrence. Its terms required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River and the Lebanese Armed Forces to deploy in the south. Neither condition was fully met. The ceasefire held for three months.
Thirty-one dead and 149 wounded are first-night figures from a densely populated urban area with limited shelter infrastructure. If the 2006 or autumn 2024 patterns hold, these numbers will climb as rescue teams reach collapsed structures. Lebanon's medical system, hollowed out by the country's financial collapse since October 2019, operates with chronic shortages of blood supplies, surgical equipment, and generator fuel. The population of southern Beirut — overwhelmingly Shia, but also including Palestinian refugees and Syrian workers — faces a military escalation in a country that has no functioning government capable of organising a civil defence response.
