Hezbollah commander confirmed dead as fighting rages in Gaza

At least 22 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza City on Saturday as fighting continued. A number of other people were wounded in a separate strike that hit a school in the same neighborhood, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip has now killed at least 41,391 Palestinians and wounded 95,760 since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Top Hezbollah commander confirmed dead 

Hezbollah confirmed the death of a senior commander, Ibrahim Aqil, hours after the Israeli army claimed he was killed. In a statement, the group said Aqil was "one of its top leaders" and was killed in Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh in what it called a "treacherous Israeli assassination."

Aqil was a member of Hezbollah's highest military body, the Jihad Council since 2008, and head of the elite Radwan Forces, which had fought in Syria. Before his death, he had risen to become one of three top commanders of the Hezbollah forces, along with Fouad Shukr, who was also killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut in July. 

The Israeli military said Aqil had been head of Hezbollah operations since 2004 and was responsible for a plan to launch a raid on northern Israel, similar to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 that triggered the war in Gaza.

"The Hezbollah commanders we eliminated today had been planning their 'October 7th' on the northern border for years," Israeli army chief General Herzi Halevi said on Friday.

The strike is another blow on Hezbollah after two days of deadly attacks in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, and marked the second time in less than two months that Israel targeted a leading Hezbollah military commander in Beirut. 

Rising death toll

The death toll from the Israeli airstrike on the Beirut suburb on Friday has risen to 31, including seven women and three children, Lebanon's health minister said Saturday. Firass Abiad told reporters that 68 people were also wounded of whom 15 remain in hospital, in the deadliest Israeli airstrike on Beirut since the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The ministry did not reveal whether the toll included Aqil or any other Hezbollah commanders.

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.

 The attack on the crowded Qaim street knocked out an eight-story building that had 16 apartments and damaged another one adjacent to it. The missiles destroyed the first building and cut through the basement of the second where the meeting of Hezbollah officials was being held. 

Ahmed Wahbi, a commander who oversaw the military operations of the Radwan special forces during the Gaza war until early 2024, was also killed in the Israeli strike, along with six other Hezbollah commanders according to a security source in Lebanon.

According to an Israeli military spokesperson, at least 16 Hezbollah militants were eliminated in the strike in Beirut. In its statements, Hezbollah said that several more of its members were killed, but did not disclose whether they were commanders or its foot soldiers.

Worldwide condemnation 

The deadly strike which has sharply escalated the year-long conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group has been met with criticism from around the world. 

The U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine-Hennis Plasschaert, said Friday's strike in a densely populated area of Beirut's southern suburbs was part of "an extremely dangerous cycle of violence with devastating consequences. This must stop now."

China's envoy to the United Nations, Fu Cong, said, "this actually is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and a total disregard for human life…and we urge an international independent investigation." 

"We urge all sides to exercise restraint and in particular, we urge Israel not to escalate the situation further and stop the bombing," he added. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however said Israel's goals were clear and its actions spoke for themselves.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who said this week that Israel is launching a new phase of war on the northern border with Israel, posted on X: "The sequence of actions in the new phase will continue until our goal is achieved: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes."

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border since Hezbollah began rocketing Israel in October in sympathy with Palestinians in the nearly year-old Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza.

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