Senior Hezbollah official killed in Israeli strike

A senior Hezbollah military commander was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday, in a major escalation that added to fears of an all-out war.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of Ibrahim Aqil after Israel said he was one of several senior Hezbollah officials killed in the strike.

Earlier, Lebanese officials said at least 14 people were killed and dozens wounded in the strike that hit the densely populated Dahieh neighborhood, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group in the city’s southern suburbs.

Scenes of chaos unfolded as emergency crews rushed to the scene of the attack, rescuing the wounded and searching for people believed to have been trapped under the rubble. At least one residential building collapsed and others were badly damaged.

Streets were closed by Hezbollah members, some appearing in disbelief, as the attack represented another humiliating blow in a week that has seen pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to the group blown up.

Dozens of people were killed and thousands injured in the attacks, which are believed to have been orchestrated by Israel.

Friday’s strike was the first to hit Beirut since July, when Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr was killed.

In a statement, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said that Aqil, a senior commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, was killed alongside senior members of the group’s operations staff and other Radwan commanders.

Hagari said they “were gathered underground, under a residential building in the heart of the Dahiyah neighborhood (in southern Beirut), hiding among Lebanese civilians, using them as human shields.”

The IDF spokesperson added that the individuals killed “were planning Hezbollah’s attack plan to ‘conquer the Galilee,’ in which Hezbollah intended to infiltrate Israeli communities and murder innocent civilians.”

The plan was first reported by the Israeli military in 2018, when The Israeli army said it was blocking the tunnels dug by Hezbollah to enter Israeli territory and kidnap and murder civilians.

In April, Washington said it was looking for Aqil, also known as Tahsin, and offered financial rewards to anyone who provided “information leading to his identification, location, arrest and/or conviction.”

He was wanted by the United States because of his ties to and seniority in Hezbollah, a group that has been declared a terrorist organization by Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries.

In the 1980s, Aqil was a member of the group that orchestrated the bombings of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and a Marine barracks, killing hundreds.

Confirming Aqil’s death in a social media post, Hezbollah described him as one of its “great jihadist leaders.”

The group was created in the early 1980s by Iran, the region’s most dominant Shiite power, to oppose Israel. At the time, Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon during the country’s civil war.

Hezbollah announced Friday that it had launched strikes against military sites in northern Israel. The Israeli army said 140 rockets were fired toward the north of the country, while Israeli police issued warnings of damage to roads.

The statement comes after Israel carried out extensive airstrikes on southern Lebanon, saying its warplanes hit more than 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers and other “terrorist sites,” including a weapons storage center.

Cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensified on October 8, 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from Gaza – when Hezbollah fired on Israeli positions in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Since then, hundreds of people, mostly Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in cross-border fighting, while tens of thousands have also been displaced on both sides of the border.

Israel recently added the return of displaced people from the country’s north to its list of war aims, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday that his country was entering a “new phase of the war,” focusing more of its efforts on the north.

Following the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon earlier this week, a sense of unease has grown in the Middle Eastern country.

This is an unprecedented security breach that shows the extent to which Israel has succeeded in penetrating the group’s communications system.

Several explosions occurred simultaneously, with the walkie-talkie blasts occurring Wednesday near a large crowd that had gathered for the funerals of four victims of Tuesday’s pager blasts.

Hezbollah and Lebanese authorities have accused Israel of being responsible for the explosions.

Israeli officials have not commented on the allegations, but most analysts agree that Israel was behind the attack.

In a televised speech Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said: “The enemy has broken all rules, all laws and all red lines. It has not cared about anything at all, neither morally, nor humanly, nor legally.”

Nasrallah promised harsh punishment, but indicated his group was not interested in escalating its current conflict with Israel.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habbib told the UN Security Council on Friday that Israel had “deliberately undermined” diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire in Gaza and “all attempts by the Lebanese government to de-escalate the situation and exercise restraint.”

Israeli envoy to the UN Danny Danon said that while his country was not seeking to spark a wider conflict, it “would not allow Hezbollah to continue its provocations.”

US and British officials have urged their citizens not to travel to Lebanon. The White House has said it is conducting intense diplomacy to prevent an escalation of the conflict along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Reiterating its previous calls, the British Foreign Office said it “continues to advise people to leave Lebanon now while trade routes remain available.”

The BBC understands that the British government wants to be ready to evacuate British nationals from Lebanon as soon as possible.