Hello and welcome to Newsa from the BBC World Service coming to you live from

London with me shawlée. Israel has opened a new front in its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon against its finances.

A bank was the latest and perhaps surprising target of Israel's airstrikes.

Overnight Sunday to Monday buildings belonging to Al-Qada al-Hasan were destroyed.

Daniel Hagari's the Israeli military spokesman.

One of our main targets last night was an underground vault with millions of dollars in cash and gold.

The money was being used to finance Hezbollah's attacks on Israel.

This vault was deliberately located under a residential building.

Our strikes will degrade Hezbollah's ability to finance its attacks on Israelis.

Daniel Hagari, well the bank, however, describes itself as a charitable institution which issues loans, but follows

Islamic principles in not charging interest for them.

Meanwhile Israel says it's identified another Hezbollah bunker full of

cash and gold hidden under a Beirut hospital, but it says it won't strike the hospital

itself. In Syria, the Israelis say they killed someone they describe as the head

of Hezbollah's money transfer unit.

So just how extensive is Hezbollah's financial footprint.

Hanin Ghadah is a Friedman senior fellow at the Washington Institute,

and author of the book Hezbollah Land.

She began by telling me about the AQAH financial network.

The Khardil-H-H-financials is what Hezbollah says, it says an association, it it's a social part of their social services network

however it does act like a bank it is part of their large banking system and it has 30

branches in Lebanon.

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