Images capture exact moment Israeli missile hit building in Beirut

Taking cover behind a large tree, a photographer from The Associated Press news agency pointed his camera towards an apartment building in Beirut that the Israeli military warned was in its sights.

When a missile plunged from the sky moments later, the photojournalist and his lens were perfectly positioned to document the trail of destruction – second by second, frame by frame.

“I heard the sound of the missile whistling, headed toward the building and then I started filming,” photographer Bilal Hussein said on Tuesday, hours after Israeli forces launched the attack. The images Hussein captured of the projectile, frozen in mid-flight before obliterating the structure, provide a striking look at the speed, power and devastation of modern warfare.

The strike on Tuesday came roughly 40 minutes after an Israeli military spokesperson posted a warning in Arabic on social media, notifying people in and around a pair of buildings in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital that they should evacuate the area.

He did not explain why the buildings were being targeted, other than to say they were near “interests and facilities” associated with the Hezbollah group.

The warning prompted many people to flee the busy, densely populated neighbourhood, even as others, including a few journalists, kept watch. By the time of the attack, the building had been evacuated and there were no reports of casualties.

Minutes before the missile brought down the building, two smaller projectiles were fired at the roof in what Israel’s military often refers to as warning strikes, according to the AP journalists at the scene. It is a practice Israel has followed in strikes in the Gaza Strip.

When the primary missile hurtled towards the building it was a blur, but Hussein’s camera provided witness.

One picture showed the missile arching through the air. Another captured it a fragment of a second before it smashed through a lower-floor balcony.

In the images that followed, a cloud of smoke and debris billowed outwards as the building collapsed.