Israel targets top Hezbollah commander in air raid on Beirut suburb that kills 12 people and wounds 66.
Israel has hit a residential area in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut in an attempted assassination of senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil.
The Israeli military says it “eliminated” Aqil on Friday, but Hezbollah has yet to confirm that he has been killed.
The attack killed 12 people and wounded 66 others, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said, in a preliminary toll.
Aqil, a senior leader in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force with a $7m reward on his head from the US Department of State, was reportedly in a joint meeting between Hezbollah and an unnamed Palestinian group when the Israeli attack levelled at least two buildings.
Witness footage showed piles of grey rubble where one building once stood and thick dust spilling into the street and covering parked cars, as Lebanese Civil Defence forces dug in search of survivors.
The attack inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after the group suffered an unprecedented attack earlier this week in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands.
It marked the second time in less than two months that Israel has targeted a leading Hezbollah military commander in Beirut. In July, an Israeli air strike killed Fuad Shukr, the group’s top military commander.
Killing Aqil, second-in-command of Hezbollah’s armed forces, would be another major blow to the group.
According to US officials, Aqil, also known as Tahsin, served on Hezbollah’s highest military body. He was wanted in the US in connection to his role in the 1983 bombings of the US Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, and of the US Marine Corps barracks, which killed 241 US personnel.
The attacks were claimed by the Islamic Jihad Organization, a Hezbollah cell, of which Aqil was a senior member.
Aqil also directed the taking of American and German captives in the 1980s, according to US officials.
The Radwan Force are at the forefront of Hezbollah’s cross-border fighting with Israel.
Aqil was injured during the pagers explosions on Tuesday and was discharged from the hospital earlier on Friday, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
