The death toll from attack by the Israeli military on a Beirut suburb rose to 31, including seven women and three children, according to reports.Atleast 68 people were also wounded in the attack, of whom 15 remain hospitalized. He said search and rescue operations are ongoing and the number of casualties will likely rise.
According to reports,23 people were missing.The strike – the deadliest targeting the Lebanese capital since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war – hit a densely populated southern neighborhood on Friday afternoon during rush hour as people returned home.
The Israeli military said Saturday it killed 16 Hezbollah operatives. Among those killed were Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, who was in charge of the group’s elite Radwan Force, and Ahmed Wahbi, another senior commander in the group’s military wing. Iran-backed Hezbollah said Friday night that 15 of its operatives were killed by Israeli forces, but did not elaborate on the location of these deaths.
The United States had previously offered a “reward of up to $7 million for information leading to the identification, location, arrest, and or conviction” of Aqil, who it has said was a leader of Hezbollah in the 1980s, when the group claimed responsibility for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed more than 300 people, and the U.S. Marines barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 U.S. personnel.
The militant group members were in a meeting in the basement of the building that was destroyed, Israel’s military said.
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 take any recovered bodies from under the rubble. 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.
Death toll rises to 31 in Israeli military attack that killed Hezbollah commanders
