An Israeli airstrike in Beirut kills a Hezbollah commander | News, Sports, Jobs

People gather near a damaged building at the site of an Israeli rocket strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched a rare airstrike Friday that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated south Beirut neighborhood. It was the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in decades, with Lebanese authorities reporting at least 14 people killed and dozens wounded in the attack.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the strike in Beirut’s Dahiya district killed Ibrahim Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, as well as 10 other Hezbollah operatives.

“We will continue to pursue our enemies to defend our citizens, even in Dahiya, in Beirut.” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, describing the Israeli strike that targeted Akil as part of “a new phase of the war”.

Hours later, Hezbollah confirmed Akil’s death. In a statement, the Lebanese militant group described Akil as righteous “a great jihadist leader” and said he had “he joined the procession of his brothers, the great martyred leaders, after a blessed life full of jihad, work, wounds, sacrifices, dangers, challenges, achievements and victories.”

Akil served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. He was sanctioned by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 people at the US Embassy in Beirut and the US Marine Corps barracks.

Last year, the US State Department posted a $7 million reward for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction, citing his role in the embassy bombing and the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.

The strike came as a new cycle of escalation between the enemies raised fears of an all-out war in the Middle East.

Hours before the Israeli strike, Hezbollah hit northern Israel with 140 rockets as the region awaited retaliation promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah for this week’s mass explosions of pagers belonging to members of the Shiite militant group.

The Israeli military did not provide the identities of the other Hezbollah commanders believed to have been killed in its strike on the crowded neighborhood, just kilometers from downtown Beirut.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 14 people were killed and 66 others wounded in the attack, which devastated the building where the Israeli military said Akil met with other militants in the basement. Nine of the injured were in serious condition, the ministry added.

Local Lebanese media broadcast images showing first responders sifting through the rubble of a collapsed city hall in the Jamous area in the heart of Dahiya, where Hezbollah conducts many of its political and security operations.

The rescue operation continued late Friday, hours after the attack, as first responders struggled to clear the rubble to reach the basement of the building where many of the bodies were reportedly found.

Friday’s airstrike – the deadliest such attack on a Beirut neighborhood since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody month-long war in 2006 – took place during rush hour as people were leaving work and the children were on their way home from school.

At Beirut’s St. Teresa Hospital, near the site of the airstrike, crowds flocked to donate blood for those injured in the attack.

“We’re all in this together, so it’s my duty,” said Hussein Harake, who lined up to donate blood.

From Israel, Gallant said he had informed senior military officials of the strike and vowed that Israel would continue against Hezbollah “Until we achieve our goal, ensuring the safe return of communities in northern Israel to their homes.”

The strike came after Hezbollah launched one of the most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, mostly targeting Israeli military sites. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha missiles. The few that got through the fires caused small fires but little damage and no Israeli casualties.

Hezbollah described its latest wave of rocket salvos as a response to past Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon — not in retaliation for the mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed at least 37 people – including two children – and were injured. Another 2,900 in attacks widely attributed to Israel.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in this week’s sophisticated attacks, which signaled a major escalation in the past 11 months of conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire regularly since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel triggered the Israeli army’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have mostly hit areas of northern Israel that have been evacuated and less populated parts of southern Lebanon.

The last time Israel hit Beirut was in an airstrike in July that killed Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur.

“The attack in Lebanon is to protect Israel” Hagari told a news conference after Friday’s strike, describing both Shukr and Akil as the two military officials closest to Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.

Hagari also accused Akil of masterminding a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians dating back decades, including an abortive plan to invade northern Israel in a manner similar to attacks led by Hamas in October 7.

After Friday’s Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah announced strikes in northern Israel, two of which it said targeted an intelligence base from where it claimed Israel had directed assassinations.

Israel remains on the sidelines, with Nasrallah vowing on Thursday to continue attacks on Israel despite the humiliating ones “coup” he said Hezbollah had suffered in sabotaging its communications devices.

“We are in a tense period” Hagari told reporters on Friday. “We are on high alert both offensively and defensively.”

In recent days, Israel has sent a heavy fighting force to its northern border, with the official war objective of returning tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel, and ordered citizens near Israel’s border with Lebanon to stay close to the bombs. shelters. Hezbollah has claimed that it will stop its fire only when there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hamas, which continues to fight Israel in Gaza, condemned the Israeli strike targeting Akil as a “new crime” and “violation of Lebanese sovereignty”.

Even as the world’s attention turns to rising Israel-Hezbollah tensions, Palestinian casualties in the besieged Gaza Strip have continued to rise.

Palestinian health authorities reported early Friday that 15 people, including children, were killed in Israeli strikes that targeted a family home and a group of people on the street in Gaza City. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has already killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.

In response to a request for comment on the latest strikes in Gaza, the Israeli military insisted on Friday that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civil damages” and accused Hamas of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas.

Israel’s bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip — launched in response to the killing of 1,200 people and the taking of 250 hostages in southern Israel on October 7 — has caused massive destruction and displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

___ Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut; Fatma Khaled in Cairo; Isabel DeBre of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bassam Hatoum in Beirut and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.