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Russia's international humanitarian cooperation agency said Israel struck a partner Russian House in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, describing the attack as an "unprovoked act of aggression" and saying the site was a strictly civilian cultural center.
In statements released on Monday, the agency, known as Rossotrudnichestvo, said the building had not been used for any military activity. Its head, Evgeny Primakov, said the director of the center, Assaad Deia, was alive and safe after the strike. He also said the agency's official office in Lebanon, the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Beirut, was staying in touch with colleagues linked to the Nabatieh branch.
Rossotrudnichestvo said the building in Nabatieh functioned as a partner Russian House, a cultural center tied to Russian humanitarian and cultural outreach abroad. For international readers, a cultural center is generally a civilian venue used for educational, cultural and community activities rather than military purposes.
Primakov said Israeli aviation had struck the site and maintained that nothing at the center had triggered the attack. In a separate official statement published on the Russian social media platform Max, the agency said it viewed the destruction of the building as an act of aggression that had not been provoked.
As it reacted to the latest attack, the agency also pointed back to a historical case involving another Soviet cultural site in the region. It said the Soviet Cultural Center in Damascus was destroyed by a direct Israeli bombing on Oct. 10, 1973, during the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, and that two people were killed in that strike.
By bringing up that earlier episode, the agency placed the Nabatieh strike within a longer history of attacks it says have hit Russian or Soviet cultural institutions in the Middle East.
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