Senior Hezbollah commander among 31 killed in Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut

<i>AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource</i><br/>

By CNN Newsource

Published September 20, 2024 11:16 am

By Tamara Qiblawi, Charbel Mallo, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Christian Edwards, Jeremy Diamond and Tim Lister, CNN

Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) — A deadly Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut on Friday has left at least 31 people dead including a high-ranking Hezbollah commander, a major to a blow for a group already reeling from attacks from Israel.

Ibrahim Aqil, part of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, was assassinated along with several other commanders, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said, accusing them of planning to raid and occupy communities in Galilee in northern Israel.

Hezbollah confirmed Aqil’s death, saying he was killed “following a treacherous Israeli assassination operation.”

Aqil had a $7 million bounty on his head from the United States for his suspected involvement in the 1983 strike on the US Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, as well as the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks, which killed 241 US personnel later that year.

According to Hagari, the targeted commanders were “underground underneath a residential building in the heart of the Dahiyeh neighborhood, using civilians as a human shield” at the time of the attack.

In total, Hezbollah confirmed the deaths of at least 16 of its operatives in the strike, which flattened a multistory residential building and was the deadliest strike between Israel and Lebanon since the October 7 attacks.

The Lebanese health minister, Firass Abiad, said at a news conference Saturday that among the 31 dead are three children and seven women. Three Syrian citizens were killed, he said, and 68 people wounded.

Rescue teams were still clearing the rubble Saturday, Abiad said, and searching for missing people. They had retrieved body parts that are unidentifiable.

A week of surprise attacks

Friday’s strike marked the fourth consecutive day of surprise attacks on Beirut and other sites across the country, even as Israeli forces continued deadly strikes and operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The first major attack against Hezbollah this week came Tuesday afternoon when pagers belonging to the militant groups’ members exploded near-simultaneously. The pagers had been used by Hezbollah to communicate after the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, encouraged members to switch to low-tech devices to prevent more of them from being assassinated.

Almost exactly 24 hours later, Lebanon was rocked by a second wave of explosions, after Hezbollah walkie-talkies detonated in Beirut and the south of the country on Wednesday.

Lebanese health minister Firass Abiad on Saturday said at least 39 people were killed in those twin attacks; 12 on Tuesday and 27 on Wednesday. Some 3,000 were injured.

In a United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday, UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Friday warned that the detonation of communication devices could violate international human rights law.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib and Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon clashed at the heated meeting, with Bou Habib calling on the council to condemn Israel’s actions and Danon slamming the Lebanese envoy for not mentioning Hezbollah.

Israel initially refused to comment on Tuesday’s pager explosions, but on Wednesday tacitly acknowledged its role in the attacks. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the “excellent achievements” of the IDF, together with the country’s security agency, the Shin Bet, and its intelligence agency Mossad.

Gallant said a “new era” of war was beginning, and on Thursday Israel targeted Beirut for a third time, flying jets and dropping flares over the city while Nasrallah made a speech in which he pledged Israel would face a “reckoning.” Later, Israel launched one of its most intense bombardments against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in nearly a year of cross–border strikes, saying it hit about 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers.

Friday’s airstrike was the third Israeli airstrike on Beirut since hostilities began last year, after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. In January, an Israeli airstrike killed Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’ military wing, who had been living in Beirut. In July, a second Israeli strike on Beirut killed Hezbollah’s most senior military official, Fu’ad Shukr.

Several other Iran-backed militant groups, including the powerful Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba in Iraq have vowed revenge for Israel’s attack on southern Beirut. The groups have carried out several attacks against US forces in Iraq and Israel since Israel’s war with Hamas started.

Before the surprise attacks on Lebanon, Israel’s security cabinet on Monday voted to add a new objective to its ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its northern border with Lebanon to their homes.

After nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes both in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. While the return of residents of northern Israel has long been understood to be a political necessity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, this is the first time it has been made an official war goal.

While ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene in southern Beirut, CNN’s team on the ground saw one car fleeing with suitcases strapped onto it, another sign of the fear and panic sweeping Lebanese civilians after days of explosions and now airstrikes.