A senior Hezbollah commander was killed in an Israeli strike

A Hezbollah commander was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday, in a major escalation that has added to fears of a major war.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of Ibrahim Aqil after Israel said he was one of the top Hezbollah figures killed in the strike.

Earlier, Lebanese officials said at least 14 people were killed and dozens injured in the strike that hit the heavily populated Dahieh neighborhood, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group in the southern part of the city.

There was chaos when emergency teams rushed to the scene of the attack, rescuing the injured and searching for people believed to be trapped under the rubble. At least one residential building was destroyed and others were seriously damaged.

The streets were blocked by Hezbollah members, some in disbelief as the attack represented another humiliating blow in a week when the group’s pagers and walkie-talkies exploded.

Scores were killed and thousands injured in the attack, which is believed to have been orchestrated by Israel.

Friday’s strike was the first to hit Beirut since July, when Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed.

In a statement, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said Aqil, who was a senior commander in the Hezbollah militia in Radwan, was killed along with the group’s senior staff and other Radwan commanders.

Hagari said the people killed were “planning Hezbollah’s ‘Conquer the Galilee’ attack plan, where Hezbollah aims to enter Israeli communities and kill innocent people”.

This program was first reported by the Israeli military in 2018, where The IDF said it was blocking the dug tunnels with Hezbollah entering Israeli territory and kidnapping and killing civilians.

In April, Washington said it was searching for Aqil, also known as Tahsin, and was offering financial rewards to anyone “with information leading to his identification, location, arrest and/or conviction”.

He was wanted by the US because of his links and his position in Hezbollah, a banned terrorist organization by Israel, the UK, the US and other countries.

In the 1980s, Aqil was a member of a group that planned the bombings of the American embassy in Beirut and a naval base, killing hundreds of people.

Confirming Aqil’s death on social media, Hezbollah described him as one of its “greatest jihadist leaders”.

The group was founded in the early 1980s by the region’s dominant Shia power, Iran, to oppose Israel. At that time, the Israeli army had occupied southern Lebanon during the civil war in that country.

Earlier on Friday, Hezbollah said it had begun strikes on military bases in northern Israel. The IDF said 140 rockets were fired into the north of the country, and Israeli police issued warnings of road damage.

It came after Israel carried out a major airstrike in southern Lebanon, saying its warplanes hit more than 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers and other “terrorist sites” including a weapons depot.

The cross-border war between Israel and Hezbollah escalated on 8 October 2023 – after an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen in Gaza – when Hezbollah opened fire on Israeli positions in coordination with the Palestinians.

Since then, hundreds of people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in cross-border fighting, and tens of thousands have been displaced on both sides of the border.

Israel recently added the return of displaced people from the north of the country to its list of war targets, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that his country was entering a “new phase of war”, focusing more on its anti-war efforts. in the north.

After the explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon earlier this week, there was a deep sense of unease in the Middle Eastern country.

It was an unprecedented security breach that showed how deeply Israel was able to penetrate the group’s communications system.

Multiple explosions occurred simultaneously, with the walkie-talkie explosion on Wednesday occurring near a large crowd gathered for the funerals of the four victims of Tuesday’s pager explosion.

Hezbollah and Lebanese authorities blamed Israel for the blast.

Israeli officials have not commented on the allegations, but most analysts agree that they are responsible for the attack.

In a televised speech on Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said: “The enemies crossed all the rules, regulations and red lines. They didn’t care about anything at all, not morally, not humanely, not legally.”

Nasrallah vowed a severe punishment, but expressed that his party is not interested in the escalation of the current conflict with Israel.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habbib told the UN Security Council on Friday that Israel was “deliberately undermining” efforts by officials to end the violence in Gaza and “all efforts by the Lebanese government to reduce power and self-restraint”.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said that while his country does not want a wider conflict, it “will not allow Hezbollah to continue its provocations”.

US and UK authorities have urged their citizens not to travel to Lebanon. The White House said it was participating in major negotiations to prevent an escalation of tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Echoing previous calls, the UK Foreign Office said it “continues to advise people to leave Lebanon now while trade routes are still available”.

The BBC understands that the UK government wants to be ready to evacuate British nationals from Lebanon at short notice.