Israel carries out targeted attack in Beirut

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel has launched rare airstrike kills senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated district of southern Beirut on Friday. It was the deadliest attack on the Lebanese capital in decades, and Lebanese authorities reported at least 14 people killed and dozens wounded in the attack.

The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said at least 100 people were killed in the attack on Beirut’s southern Dahiya district. Ibrahim Akil, commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces and 10 other Hezbollah fighters.

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

Hours later, Hezbollah confirmed Akil’s death. In a statement, the Lebanese militant group described Akil as a “great jihad leader” and said he “joined the procession of his brothers, great martyr 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 role in the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and a U.S. Marine Corps barracks.

Last year, the U.S. State Department offered 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 comes as a new cycle of escalating tensions between the foes has sparked fears of a war breaking out in the Middle East.

Hours before the Israeli attack, Hezbollah fired 140 rockets at northern Israel as the region awaited revenge promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah this week mass pager explosions belonging to members of the Shiite militant group.

The Israeli military did not identify the other Hezbollah commanders who were reportedly killed in the attack on a crowded district of the city located just a few kilometers from central Beirut.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 14 people were killed and 66 wounded in the attack. The attack razed an apartment building where the Israeli army said Akil had been meeting with other fighters in the basement. Nine of the wounded were in serious condition, the ministry added.

Local television stations in Lebanon showed footage of rescuers searching through the rubble of a collapsed tower block in the Jamous district in the heart of Dahiya, where Hezbollah conducts many of its political and security operations.

The rescue operation continued into the night on Friday, hours after the attack, as rescuers struggled to clear debris to reach the building’s basement, where many bodies were believed to be buried.

Friday’s airstrike — the deadliest on a Beirut neighborhood since the bloody, month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 — came at rush hour, when people were leaving work and children were returning from school.

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

“In this situation, we are all together, so it is my duty,” said Hussein Harake, who lined up to donate blood.

Gallant said he had briefed senior military officials from Israel on the attack and promised that Israel would continue to fight Hezbollah “until we achieve our goal of ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes.”

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

Hezbollah has described its latest wave of rocket attacks as a response to earlier Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon, not as revenge for Massive explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday in which at least 37 people, including two children, were killed and 2,900 injured in attacks widely attributed to Israel.

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

Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have regularly exchanged fire. Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 ignited a devastating Israeli military offensive in Gaza. But previous Cross-border attacks mainly affected areas in northern Israel evacuated and less populated parts of southern Lebanon.

Israel’s last attack on Beirut came in July, killing senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur.

“The attack in Lebanon is aimed at protecting Israel,” Hagari told a news conference after Friday’s attack, describing Shukr and Akil as the two military men who are closest to Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.

Hagari also accused Akil of planning a series of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians dating back decades, including a never-implemented plan to invade northern Israel in a similar manner to the October 7 Hamas attacks.

After Friday’s Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah announced attacks on northern Israel, two of which targeted an intelligence base from which Israel said the attacks were carried out.

Israel remains tense, with Nasrallah vowing on Thursday to continue attacks on Israel despite a humiliating “blow” he said Hezbollah suffered from sabotaged communications.

“We are in a period of tension,” Hagari told reporters Friday. “We are prepared on high alert both offensively and defensively.”

In recent days, Israel has sent a massive combat force to its northern border, declaring as its official war goal the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel, and has ordered citizens near Israel’s border with Lebanon to stay close to bomb shelters. Hezbollah has insisted it will only cease fire if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hamas, which continues to fight Israel in the Gaza Strip, condemned the Israeli attack on Akil, calling it a “new crime” and a “violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

Even as the world’s attention is focused on the rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the Palestinians victims in the besieged Gaza Strip continued to grow.

Palestinian health authorities said Friday morning that 15 people, including children, were killed in Israeli attacks that targeted a family home and a group of people on a street in Gaza City. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 41,000 Palestiniansaccording to the Ministry of Health based in the Gaza Strip, which does not distinguish between warriors and civilians.

In response to a request for comment on the latest attacks on Gaza, the Israeli military on Friday stressed that it had taken “real precautions to mitigate harm to civilians” and accused Hamas of endangering civilians by carrying out operations in residential areas.

Israel’s bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip — carried out in response to the killing of 1,200 people and the taking of 250 hostages by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7 — caused widespread destruction and displaced some 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 in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bassam Hatoum in Beirut and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.