The death toll from an Israeli air strike on a Beirut suburb has risen to 31, including seven women and three children, Lebanon’s health minister said.
Firass Abiad told reporters that 68 people were also wounded, of whom 15 remain in hospital, in the deadliest Israeli air strike on Beirut since the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war.
The death toll included Ibrahim Akil, a Hizbullah commander who was in charge of the group’s elite Radwan Forces, as well as about a dozen members of the militant group who were meeting in the basement of the building that was destroyed.
Three Syrian nationals were among the dead, Mr Abiad said.
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The Israeli military said the strike killed at least 16 Hizbullah operatives, including Akil.
Israel launched the rare strike in the densely populated southern Beirut neighbourhood on Friday afternoon during rush hour as people returned home from work and students from schools.
On Saturday morning, Hizbullah’s media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the air strike where workers were still digging through the rubble.
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 bodies recovered from under the rubble.
Friday’s deadly strike came hours after Hizbullah 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.
Israel and Hizbullah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’s October 7th 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.
Earlier this week, Israel’s security cabinet said stopping Hizbullah’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.
The tit-for-tat strikes have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel. – PA