Hezbollah has confirmed its senior commanders Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi were both killed in a strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday, which killed at least 35 people, including three children till saturday
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strike targeted the Iran-backed group's elite Radwan unit
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told a security council meeting that the pager and walkie-talkie explosions this week in Lebanon, which killed 37 people, violated international humanitarian law
On Thursday night, the Israeli Air Force attacked "hundreds" of Hezbollah rocket launch pads in southern Lebanon and on Friday, attacked military buildings in six areas, including Kfar Kila
On Friday, Hezbollah attacked northern Israel with around 200 rockets launched from Lebanon, according to the Israeli military
Abiad told reporters that 68 people were also wounded, of whom 15 were in hospital, after the deadliest Israeli airstrike on Beirut since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
The death toll included Ibrahim Akil, a Hezbollah 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.
Israel launched the rare airstrike 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, Hezbollah's media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the airstrike 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 recover bodies from under the rubble.After a week of deepening conflict, there’s speculation here – and throughout the region – about what might come next.
Israel’s government began the week by setting a formal new war goal: the return home of 60,000 people in northern Israel displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire. On the Lebanese side of the border, 90,000 people have been displaced by the conflict.
Since the goal was announced, Hezbollah has been struck in ways it’s become used to, namely air strikes, and ways it never anticipated, meaning the wave of deadly pager and walkie talkie explosions.
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant has spoken of a new phase in the war, with the centre of gravity said to be moving north. A division of the army has been moved north, away from its previous focus on Gaza in the south.
But, despite all this, Israel’s new war goal doesn’t appear any closer to being achieved.
Just yesterday, Hezbollah fired around 200 rockets into northern Israel, according to the Israeli military, and the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has said it won’t stop fighting until Israel ceases its aggression in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
As a result, there’s public debate about Israel’s next move, including a potential ground incursion into southern Lebanon, and that’s feeding into international concern about a slide into all-out war.
Following yesterday’s airstrikes on Beirut, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a brief message on social media. It said: “Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves.”
