Rescuers in Beirut searched on Saturday for people still missing in the rubble after an Israeli airstrike targeting Hezbollah commanders yesterday killed at least 37 people in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, according to authorities.
Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed group, said 16 members, including senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another commander, Ahmed Wahbi, were among those killed in the deadliest strike in more than a year against Israel.
The Israeli army said it had attacked the secret gathering of Aqil and the leaders of the Hezbollah militia in Radwan, and had almost destroyed all their military channels.
The attack hit a multi-storey building in a crowded area and damaged a neighboring kindergarten, a security source said. Three children and seven women were among the dead, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Cross-border strikes continued Saturday: Israeli warplanes carried out the worst bombardment in 11 months in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah said it was launching rocket attacks on military targets in northern Israel.
The Israeli army said it hit about 180 targets, destroying thousands of rocket launchers.
Friday’s strike deepened the conflict and further damaged Hezbollah after two days of attacks this week in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members were blown up.
The death toll in those incidents has risen to 39, and more than 3,000 have been injured.
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The attack on telecommunications equipment is widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has canceled a planned trip to the UN General Assembly in New York.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he was concerned about the state’s expansion but that Israel’s killing of a top Hezbollah leader showed justice for the group, which Washington designates as terrorists.
“While the risk of escalation is real, we believe there is also a different way to end hostilities and a strong solution that makes people on both sides of the border feel safer,” Sullivan told reporters.
ISRAEL IS WATCHING RETALIATION
Hezbollah has said it will continue to fight Israel until it agrees to a ceasefire in its war with Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza – sparked by Hamas-led violence in southern Israel on October 7.
U.S. officials say that won’t happen anytime soon. Israel wants Hezbollah to stop firing and withdraw troops from the border region, following a UN resolution signed with Israel in 2006, regardless of the Gaza deal.
Anticipating retaliation, the Israeli military has restricted gatherings and raised the alert level for residents of northern communities. The warning extended as far south as the coastal city of Haifa, indicating that Israel thought Hezbollah could strike deeper than it had since the start of the war with Hamas.
In southern Lebanon on Saturday, people described a huge explosion that lit up the night sky and shook the world as Israel carried out its latest strikes.
Hezbollah-aligned transport minister Ali Hamieh told reporters at the scene of Friday’s strike in the Beirut suburbs that at least 23 people were still missing.
“The enemy of Israel is taking the region to war,” he said.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said this week that Israel is launching a new phase of the war on the northern border, wrote in X: “The sequence of actions in the new phase will continue until our goal is achieved: the safe return of northern residents to their homes.”
Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border since Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October in sympathy with the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had been carrying out “heavy strikes” in southern Lebanon after discovering Hezbollah plans to target Israeli communities.
Airspace in northern Israel – from the city of Hadera in the north – is closed to private jets but international flights were not affected, the military said.
With at least 70 people killed in Lebanon this week, the number of clashes in the country since October has surpassed 740 during the worst Israeli-Hezbollah outbreak since the 2006 war.
The UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine-Hennis Plasschaert, said on Friday that the strike in a densely populated area of ​​Beirut was part of “a very dangerous cycle of violence with tragic consequences. This must end now”.
