Israeli strike on Beirut kills top Hezbollah figures; Lebanese health minister reports 37 dead

Israel launched a rare airstrike that killed two senior Hezbollah military officials and several others in a densely populated southern Beirut neighbourhood on Friday, Hezbollah said. It was the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in years.

Lebanese health authorities initially reported at least 14 people killed and dozens more wounded. On Saturday, Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said the death toll had risen to 37, with three children and seven women among the dead.

Hezbollah said overnight that those killed included 16 of its members, including senior leader Ibrahim Akil and another top commander, Ahmed Wahbi.

The Israeli military’s chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, earlier said the strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya district killed Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, and 10 other Hezbollah operatives.

“We will continue pursuing our enemies in order to defend our citizens, even in Dahiya, in Beirut,” said Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, describing the Israeli strike that targeted Akil as part of “a new phase of war.”

Hezbollah described Wahbi as a top commander who oversaw the military operations of the Radwan special forces during the Israel-Hamas war until early 2024.

News of the strike came as a flurry of tit-for-tat bombardments between the enemies raised fears of a full-out war erupting in the Middle East.

Hezbollah fired rockets before strike

Hours before the Israeli strike, Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets as the region awaited the revenge promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over this week’s mass explosions of pagers and other devices belonging to members of the Shia militant group.

The Israeli military did not provide the identities of the other Hezbollah commanders allegedly killed in its strike on the crowded neighbourhood just kilometres from downtown Beirut.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 68 others were wounded in the attack, which levelled the apartment building where the Israeli army claimed Akil had been meeting with other militants in the basement.

According to Global Affairs Canada, there are no reports of Canadian citizens injured in the recent attacks.

Nearly 45,000 Canadians in Lebanon

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly reiterated calls for a ceasefire to help end violence in the region.

“We are very concerned about what is happening in Lebanon and of course in the wider Middle East,” Joly told reporters in Toronto on Friday.

“Notwithstanding any form of tactics or different strategies, at the end of the day, we need this war to end because there’s been too many civilian casualties, too many innocent children, innocent women who have been killed and there’s been too [much] suffering on both sides.”

Joly said close to 45,000 Canadians are in Lebanon, months after warning there is no guarantee Ottawa can evacuate them if the situation deteriorates further.

Canada later upgraded its travel advisory, telling citizens to avoid all travel to Lebanon because the situation is “volatile and unpredictable.” Those on the ground should book their own flights out of the country, it said.

Deadliest such airstrike in nearly 20 years

Local networks in Lebanon broadcast footage showing first responders sifting through the rubble of a collapsed high-rise in the Jamous area in the heart of Dahiya, where Hezbollah conducts many of its political and security operations.

Friday’s airstrike — the deadliest such attack on a neighborhood of Beirut since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody, month-long war in 2006 — hit during rush hour, as people were leaving work and children heading home from school.

At Beirut’s St. Therese Hospital near the scene of the airstrike, crowds flocked to donate blood for those wounded in the attack.

“We are all together in this situation, so it’s my obligation,” said Hussein Harake, who lined up to donate blood.

From Israel, Gallant said he briefed senior military officials on the strike and vowed Israel would press on against Hezbollah “until we achieve our goal, ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes.”

The strike came after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets. The few that got through sparked small fires but caused little damage and no Israeli casualties.

Hezbollah described its latest wave of rocket salvos as a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon — not as revenge for the mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed at least 37 people and wounded 2,900 others in attacks widely attributed to Israel.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in this week’s sophisticated attacks, which signalled a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.

The last time Israel hit Beirut was in a July airstrike that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.

“The attack in Lebanon is to protect Israel,” Hagari said at a news conference following Friday’s strike, describing both Shukr and Akil as the two military officials closest to Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.

Hagari also accused Akil of plotting a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians dating back decades, including a never-realized plan to invade northern Israel in a similar way to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.

Last year, the U.S. State Department posted a $7 million US reward for information leading to Akil’s identification, location, arrest or conviction, citing his role in the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.

After Friday’s Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah announced two more attacks on northern Israel, one of which it said targeted an intelligence base from where it claimed Israel directed assassinations.

Israel remains on edge, with Nasrallah vowing Thursday to keep up strikes on Israel despite the humiliating “blow” he said Hezbollah suffered in the sabotage of its communication devices.

“We are in a tense period,” Hagari told reporters Friday. “We are prepared on high alert both offensively and defensively.”

In recent days, Israel has sent a powerful fighting force to the northern border, designated as an official war goal the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel and ordered citizens near Israel’s border with Lebanon to stay close to bomb shelters.

Hamas, which continues to fight Israel in Gaza, condemned the Israeli strike targeting Akil as a “new crime” and “violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”

Even as the world’s attention turns to the surge in Israel-Hezbollah tensions, Palestinian casualties in the besieged Gaza Strip continued to mount.

Palestinian health authorities early Friday reported that 15 people, including children, were killed in Israeli strikes that targeted a family home and a group of people on the street in Gaza City. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has already killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians.

In response to a request for comment on the latest Gaza strikes, the Israeli military insisted on Friday that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm” and accused Hamas of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas.

Israel’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip — launched in response to Hamas killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage in southern Israel on Oct. 7, by Israeli figures — has wreaked vast destruction and displaced about 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.