(Beirut) Hezbollah announced Saturday the death of two of its leaders in the Israeli strike the day before near Beirut, which targeted its elite force and left a total of 31 dead, dealing a new blow to the Lebanese Islamist movement after the explosions of its transmission devices.
“Very concerned”, the UN called for “de-escalation” and “maximum restraint”, at a time when the war front in the Gaza Strip is extending to Lebanon.
In the Palestinian territory besieged since the start of the Israeli offensive against Hamas almost a year ago, the Civil Defense announced on Saturday the death of 19 people in a bombing on a school in the city of Gaza, in the north, where thousands of displaced people had taken refuge.
The army said it had targeted fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement.
At the same time, exchanges of fire have intensified in recent days between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and supported by Iran, on both sides of Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
On Saturday, the army announced that it had targeted sites of the movement in Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed to have fired rockets at two military sites in northern Israel.
AFP journalists reported intense shelling in different areas of southern Lebanon.
The day before, an Israeli bombing raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, left 31 dead, including three children, according to an official Lebanese report.
The strike, which left a huge crater in the ground, hit a densely populated area where rescuers, aided by bulldozers, continued to sift through the rubble on Saturday.
A source close to Hezbollah announced Saturday that the strike targeted a meeting in the basement of a building of the command of the movement’s elite force, the Radwan unit, of which 16 members were killed.
Among them were Ibrahim Aqil, the head of this unit, as well as another senior commander of the elite unit, Ahmed Mahmoud Wahbi, who until the beginning of this year had led the military operations of the Radwan unit in support of Hamas, Hezbollah said on Saturday.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY HEZBOLLAH MILITARY MEDIA PRESS SERVICE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Ibrahim Aqil, Hezbollah’s second top military commander
Ibrahim Aqil is the second senior Hezbollah military commander eliminated by Israel since the movement opened its southern Lebanese front in October 2023.
“Terrible punishment”
Iran condemned a “flagrant violation” […] of the territorial integrity” of Lebanon, while the Israeli army assured that it was not seeking “a broad escalation” in the region.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the strike on a populated area “proved once again that the Israeli enemy does not take into account any humanitarian considerations.”
Tensions in the region have further risen following spectacular explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday, attributed to Israel, of transmission devices used by Hezbollah members, which killed 37 people and injured 2,931 across Lebanon.
The movement’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had threatened Israel with “terrible punishment.”
Israel has not commented on the attacks, which took place in the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as in southern and eastern Lebanon, two other Hezbollah strongholds.
PHOTO MAHMOUD ZAYYAT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the village of Addousieh near the city of Sidon, southern Lebanon, September 21, 2024.
The head of Lebanese diplomacy, Abdallah Bou Habib, announced the filing of a complaint with the UN Security Council following “the Israeli cyberterrorist aggression which constitutes a war crime.”
“Booby-trapped” devices
International law “prohibits” the use of “booby-trapped” devices that appear to be “harmless” objects, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, told the Security Council on Friday.
“Simultaneously targeting thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowing who is in possession of the devices in question […] violates international humanitarian law,” he said.
The first wave of pager blasts came Tuesday shortly after Israel announced it was expanding its war aims to the northern front, the border with Lebanon, to allow tens of thousands of residents displaced by the violence to return home.
The main objectives stated so far were the destruction of Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and considered a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and the European Union, and the return of the hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
“You will not be able to bring the people of the north” back home, Hassan Nasrallah retorted. “Lebanon’s front with Israel will remain open until the end of the aggression in Gaza,” he said.
PHOTO OMAR AL-QATTAA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Palestinians inspect damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, September 21, 2024.
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas commandos carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures that include hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Of the 251 people abducted during the attack, 97 are still being held in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
At least 41,391 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli retaliatory offensive on the Gaza Strip, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN.