ISRAEL – A deadly Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut on Friday has left at least 31 people dead, including a high-ranking Hezbollah commander, a major to a blow for a group already reeling from attacks from Israel.

Ibrahim Aqil, part of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, was assassinated along with several other commanders, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said, accusing them of planning to raid and occupy communities in Galilee in northern Israel. Hezbollah confirmed Aqil’s death, saying he was killed “following a treacherous Israeli assassination operation”.

Aqil had a $7 million bounty on his head from the United States for his suspected involvement in the 1983 strike on the US Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, as well as the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks, which killed 241 US personnel later that year. According to Hagari, the targeted commanders were “underground underneath a residential building in the heart of the Dahiyeh neighborhood, using civilians as a human shield” at the time of the attack.

In total, Hezbollah confirmed the deaths of at least 16 of its operatives in the strike, which flattened a multistory residential building and was the deadliest strike between Israel and Lebanon since the October 7 attacks. The Lebanese health minister, Firass Abiad, said at a news conference Saturday that among the 31 dead are three children and seven women. Three Syrian citizens were killed, he said, and 68 people wounded. Rescue teams were still clearing the rubble Saturday, Abiad said, and searching for missing people. They had retrieved body parts that are unidentifiable.

Friday’s strike marked the fourth consecutive day of surprise attacks on Beirut and other sites across the country, even as Israeli forces continued deadly strikes and operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The first major attack against Hezbollah this week came Tuesday afternoon when pagers belonging to the militant groups’ members exploded near-simultaneously. The pagers had been used by Hezbollah to communicate after the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, encouraged members to switch to low-tech devices to prevent more of them from being assassinated.

Almost exactly 24 hours later, Lebanon was rocked by a second wave of explosions, after Hezbollah walkie-talkies detonated in Beirut and the south of the country on Wednesday. Lebanese health minister Firass Abiad on Saturday said at least 39 people were killed in those twin attacks; 12 on Tuesday and 27 on Wednesday. Some 3,000 were injured. In a United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday, UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Friday warned that the detonation of communication devices could violate international human rights law. (CNN)…[+]