Hezbollah says at least 15 operatives killed in Friday IDF strike

The death toll from an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb has risen to 31, Lebanon’s health minister said on Saturday.

Firass Abiad told reporters 68 people were wounded of whom 15 remain in hospital, adding that search and rescue operations were still ongoing, with the number of casualties likely to rise.

The rare strike — the deadliest targeting the Lebanese capital since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war — hit a densely populated southern neighbourhood on Friday afternoon during rush hour as people returned home.

Israel said it killed 11 Hezbollah operatives, including Ibrahim Akil who was in charge of the group’s elite Radwan Force. The militant group members were in a meeting in the basement of the building that was destroyed.

Hezbollah announced overnight Friday that 15 of its operatives — including two top commanders Ahmed Mahmoud Wahbi and Ibrahim Akil — were killed by Israeli forces.

Lebanese troops cordoned off the area preventing people from reaching the building that was knocked down as members of the Lebanese Red Cross stood nearby to take any recovered body from under the rubble.

On Saturday morning, Hezbollah’s media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the airstrike where workers were still digging through the rubble.

The Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamie told reporters at the scene that 23 people are still missing.

The airstrike on the crowded Qaim street knocked out an eight-story building that had 16 apartments and damaged another one adjacent to it.

The missiles destroyed the first building and cut through the basement of the second where the meeting of Hezbollah officials was being held.

Deadly strike comes after intense bombardment

Friday’s deadly strike came hours after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets.

The militant group said its latest wave of rocket salvos was a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. However, it came days after mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies killed at least 37 people — including two children. Some 2,900 others were wounded in the assault which has been widely attributed to Israel.

The Lebanese health minister said Saturday hospitals across the country were filled with the wounded.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attack which marked a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’ October 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.

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Earlier this week, Israel’s security cabinet said stopping Hezbollah’s attacks in the country’s north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal, as it considers a wider military operation in Lebanon that could spark an all-out conflict.

Israel has since sent a powerful fighting force to the northern border.

The tit-for-tat strikes have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.