Getty PicturesA high Hezbollah navy commander was killed in an Israeli air strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday, in a significant escalation that has added to fears of an all-out conflict.
Hezbollah confirmed Ibrahim Aqil’s dying after Israel stated he was one in every of a number of senior Hezbollah figures killed within the strike.
Earlier, Lebanese officers stated at the least 14 folks had been killed and dozens injured within the strike that hit the densely populated Dahieh space, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group within the metropolis’s southern suburbs.
There have been chaotic scenes as emergency groups rushed to the location of the assault, rescuing the wounded and trying to find folks believed to be trapped underneath the rubble. At the very least one residential constructing collapsed and others had been closely broken.
Streets had been closed by Hezbollah members, some trying incredulous because the assault represented one other humiliating blow in per week which noticed pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to the group explode.
Dozens had been killed and 1000’s wounded in these assaults, extensively believed to be orchestrated by Israel.
Friday’s strike was the primary to hit Beirut since July, when Hezbollah’s navy chief Fuad Shukr was killed.
US AuthoritiesIn an announcement, Israel Protection Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari stated Aqil, a senior commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, was killed alongside senior operatives within the group’s operations workers and different Radwan commanders.
Hagari stated the people killed had been “planning Hezbollah’s ‘Conquer the Galilee’ assault plan, during which Hezbollah meant to infiltrate Israeli communities and homicide harmless civilians”.
The plan was first reported by the Israeli military in 2018, when the IDF said it was blocking tunnels dug by Hezbollah to penetrate Israeli territory and kidnap and murder civilians.
In April, Washington said it was searching for Aqil, also known as Tahsin, and offered financial rewards to anyone with “info resulting in his identification, location, arrest and/or conviction”.
He was wanted by the US due to his links and seniority within Hezbollah, a group that has been proscribed a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, US and other countries.
In the 1980s, Aqil was a member of the group that orchestrated the bombings of the US embassy in Beirut and a marine barracks, killing hundreds of people.
Confirming Aqil’s death in a post on social media, Hezbollah described him as one of its “nice jihadist leaders”.
The group was established in the early 1980s by the region’s most dominant Shia power, Iran, to oppose Israel. At the time, Israel’s forces had occupied southern Lebanon during the country’s civil war.
Earlier on Friday, Hezbollah said it had launched strikes on military sites in northern Israel. The IDF said 140 rockets were fired into the north of the country, while Israeli police issued warnings about damage to roads.
It came after Israel carried out extensive air strikes on southern Lebanon, saying its warplanes had hit more than 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers and other “terrorist websites” including a weapons storage facility.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from Gaza – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Since then hundreds of people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in the cross-border fighting, while tens of thousands have also been displaced on both sides of the border.
Israel recently added the return of people displaced from the north of the country to its list of war goals, and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that his country is entering a “new part of the conflict”, concentrating more of its efforts on the north.
After the pager and walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon earlier this week, there has been a deepened sense of unease in the Middle Eastern country.
It was an unprecedented security breach that indicated how deeply Israel had managed to penetrate the group’s communication system.
Many of the explosions occurred simultaneously, with walkie-talkie explosions on Wednesday occurring in the vicinity of a large crowd that had gathered for the funerals of four victims of Tuesday’s pager blasts.
Hezbollah and Lebanese authorities have blamed Israel for the explosions.
Israeli officials have not commented on the allegations, but most analysts agree that it is behind the attack.
In a televised address on Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said: “The enemy crossed all rules, laws and red lines. It didn’t care about anything at all, not morally, not humanely, not legally.”
Nasrallah vowed a harsh punishment, however indicated his group was not concerned with an escalation of its present battle with Israel.
Lebanese international minister Abdallah Bou Habbib advised the UN Safety Council on Friday that Israel had “deliberately undermined” diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire in Gaza and “all attempts of the Lebanese government to de-escalate and exercise self-restraint”.
Israel’s UN envoy Danny Danon stated that whereas his nation just isn’t looking for a wider battle, it “will not allow Hezbollah to continue its provocation”.
US and UK authorities have urged their residents to not journey to Lebanon. The White Home stated it was concerned in intense diplomacy to stop escalation of the battle alongside the Israel-Lebanon border.
Reiterating earlier calls, the UK International Workplace stated it’s “continuing to advise people to leave Lebanon now while commercial routes remain available”.
The BBC understands the UK authorities desires to be able to evacuate British nationals from Lebanon at quick discover.
