It took less than five seconds for the building in southern Beirut to be reduced to rubble.
Residents heard the whoosh and watched as a missile slammed into the bottom of the multistory building, which then sank to the ground, a huge plume of gray smoke rising and debris flying after the strike.
Videos circulating on social media and verified by NBC News, showed several men watching the strike on Lebanon’s capital from a distance, standing by their cars as the building crumples. Others drove their motorbikes away from the scene.
In another video, one man can be seen running from the strike as a colossal bang rings out. Four other men hurry away as one warns the others to “move back so that the flying stones do not fall on you.”
A third video that captures the strike from afar shows a cloud of dust washing through the neighborhood.
It was not immediately clear if there was anyone inside the building or if there were any casualties, but the strike was caught from multiple angles by people gathered outside.
“They targeted two buildings, not one,” a man can be heard shouting in the third video. Two explosions can be heard in several of the videos, although it unclear where the second blast came from.
Israel has landed a series of strikes on the city in recent days, expanding its offensive in an assault that sparked panic.
Throughout Sunday night, the Israeli military hit bank branches across Lebanon to target Hezbollah’s finances.
Hundreds of residents in Lebanon’s capital and its surrounding suburbs were also forced to flee their homes after the Israel Defense Forces issued a string of evacuation orders, with blasts ringing out shortly afterward.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari warned that the evacuation orders for residents of Beirut and other areas of Lebanon were issued ahead of strikes targeting buildings he said were being “used to finance Hezbollah’s terror activities.”
Officials at a hospital in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut known as a Hezbollah stronghold, told NBC News they had evacuated the medical facility after Israel claimed a Hezbollah cash bunker was under the site.
The Israeli military alleged that Hezbollah has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold stashed in a bunker built under the Sahel General Hospital, a charge which the facility’s director denied.
However, the IDF said it would not attack the hospital directly, but the medical facility’s director, Dr. Fadi Alami, told NBC News that officials still moved to evacuate the hospital.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
