TEL AVIV, March 13 (Reuters) – The Israeli military said it carried out an air strike on a bridge in southern Lebanon on Friday, in what appeared to be the first time in the current campaign against Hezbollah that Israel acknowledged it had targeted civilian infrastructure.
The Israeli military said that the Zrariyeh bridge, which spans the Litani River, was targeted because it was a key crossing used by Hezbollah militants moving between northern and southern Lebanon, but provided no evidence to support the claim.
It also said Hezbollah militants had positioned launchers near the bridge and carried out attacks on Israel from the area.
Striking the bridge was necessary to remove a threat to Israeli civilians, the military said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, Lebanon’s state media reported that a drone struck a residential apartment in Beirut’s Burj Hammoud district on the northern outskirts of the Lebanese capital on Friday.
It is the first time the area has been targeted.
Israel’s military has carried out daily strikes this week on Lebanon in an offensive against Tehran-backed Hezbollah after it launched attacks on Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced.
(Reporting by Tala Ramadan in Dubai and Alexander Cornwell in Tel Aviv; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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