Israel targeted a senior Hizbullah commander on Friday in an air strike on the group’s stronghold in southern Beirut, escalating hostilities between the two sides and fuelling fears of a full-blown war.
The target was Hizbullah’s operations commander, Ibrahim Aqil, according to people familiar with the matter, who had a $7 million (€6.3 million) US bounty on his head over his alleged involvement in the 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed hundreds of people.
Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported that an F-35 warplane launched four missiles into the Jamous area of Dahiyeh, striking a residential building. Israel said Mr Aqil was killed in the attack, alongside other senior members of the group’s elite Radwan unit. The strike killed 12 people and wounded 59 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said, in a preliminary toll.
It capped a week of deadly mass detonations of the Iran-backed militant group’s communications devices that killed 37 people and injured thousands more. Hizbullah has blamed the attacks on Israel, which has not directly commented.
The Israeli strike on Friday is the second targeting a senior Hizbullah commander in southern Beirut since the conflict erupted last October. A July strike on a residential building in Dahiyeh killed Fuad Shukr, Hizbullah’s top military commander.
Mr Aqil, like Mr Shukr, was one of the group’s earliest founding members and sat on Hizbullah’s Jihad Council, the group’s highest military body, according to four people familiar with Hizbullah’s operations.
Mr Aqil, who headed the group’s special operations, is suspected by the US of involvement in attacks 41 years ago in Beirut at the US and French barracks, which killed 307 people, and the US embassy, which killed 63.
Hizbullah did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Mr Aqil. But the strike dealt another humiliating blow to Lebanon’s dominant political and military force, which was still reeling from the mass detonations this week.
The number of confirmed dead and injured was likely to climb as the attack took place during rush hour in a densely packed neighbourhood.
Lebanon’s civil defence authorities said rescue efforts were ongoing, with people still being pulled from the rubble after two residential buildings collapsed.
Footage circulating on social media showed burnt-out cars and large piles of rubble where a building would have stood, indicating a substantial strike. Broadcasting live from the scene, Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV showed a building with its front facade blown off.
The strike in Beirut came amid intensifying salvos between Israeli forces and Hizbullah, which have been exchanging cross-border fire since Hizbullah started launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas on October 8th, the day after the Palestinian militant group’s attack on Israel.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant declared this week that the war between the two foes had entered a “new phase”, adding on Thursday evening that Hizbullah “will pay an increasing price”.
On Thursday night, the Israeli military said that its jets struck around 100 rocket launchers in Lebanon that were due to fire at Israel “in the immediate future”. It was one of Israel’s heaviest rounds of strikes on Lebanon since the start of the war.
On Friday, Hizbullah fired more than 140 rockets at Israeli-controlled territory, according to the Israeli military, sparking fires in several areas. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Following the strike on Beirut, Hizbullah said it had launched more rocket salvos targeting what it said were military installations, including one military intelligence headquarters it said was “responsible for assassinations”.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US still did not see a wider war as “inevitable”.
“We don’t want to see escalation, we don’t want to see a second front in this war opened up,” Mr Kirby said. “Everything we’re doing is going to be to try to prevent that outcome.”
Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati, who condemned the “criminal” attacks on Lebanon this week, said he had requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. “All the communications I received yesterday from senior international officials confirmed that the Israeli enemy crossed red lines,” he said.
Mr Mikati said he would head to the US for diplomatic talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly “to assert that there is still space available for a diplomatic solution”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024