The Shia militant group says its emergency plans had already swung into action after the station was banned on a satellite carrier in Europe in 2004, with Washington and Brussels branding Hizbullah a terrorist organization.
"We considered that ban a warning. If in times of peace they wanted to silence us, what would they do in a time of war?" said Ibrahim Farhat of Al Manar, which means "the beacon" in English.
Farhat, 42, has been serving as public relations chief for the defiant satellite TV channel, a change from his peacetime duties as head of a think-tank.
The station's five-storey headquarters in the Shia southern suburbs of Beirut, with a studio in the basement and offices above, were first attacked in an Israeli air strike on July 13.
That was one day after Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers, triggering a conflict in which hundreds of people have since lost their lives on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border, with civilians in Lebanon bearing the brunt.
"We had already reduced our numbers [when the planes struck Al Manar] and only one person was slightly hurt," said Farhat. "We started preparing for a situation when Al Manar would be considered a military target."
Three days later, the building was reduced to rubble. But as in the rest of the normally teeming suburbs, "we had mostly evacuated and suffered only a few light injuries", he said.
Farhat is proud of the operation which has kept Al Manar on the air from a location which is being kept a military secret.
"We were off the air for just two minutes - that's all it took for the switch of location," he said. "We moved to premises which we had prepared in advance, well before the 12th."
Al Manar, a private station with shareholders, also had substitute relay stations on standby. "Now at the national level we have almost total coverage, while the satellite coverage internationally is total," Farhat said.
His colleague Zeinab Al Saffar, a white-headscarfed news anchor, normally doubles as an academic, teaching subjects at the Lebanese University ranging from media studies and fine arts to business and hotel management.
She has not seen her parents and siblings since the first day of the Israeli bombings, when their house was one of the many destroyed. But she knows her family escaped unharmed.
"As journalists we cannot go underground. In war you have to take risks," said Saffar, an attractive 31-year-old Lebanese of Iraqi origin. "Now I feel like a real journalist, a fighter journalist - fighting to tell the people the truth," she added.
Interviewed in the bourgeois splendor of the five-star Phoenicia Hotel as a pianist played in the background, both Saffar and Farhat were smartly dressed.
Saffar declined a cigarette, warning with a smile that "it's bad for the skin."
Now "in war mode," Al Manar has dropped movies, soap operas, sport and entertainment from its normal schedule.
The station has to survive without advertising. It broadcasts news, political talk shows, reports from the front and footage of Hizbullah guerrillas in action, complete with rousing anthems and the Iranian-backed movement's yellow flag. "In normal times, we win the prize for best sports presenter," Saffar said.
Farhat claimed that even he did not know the location of the new studio, and neither of them was aware that Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah was giving a "victory" speech on Al Manar as they were being interviewed.
"For your own security, it's better you don't know the location. They might try to get it out of you after you return to your own country," warned Saffar.
The employees are now "working in mobile teams, without fixed schedules, and with separate responsibilities", explained Farhat. They coordinate by phone or email.
"We believe in what we are doing. We are committed. Obviously we are not in it for the money. This is Al Manar's strength," he said, protesting that Israel's attacks on his and other Beirut broadcasters violated Geneva Conventions.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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