BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut apartment block killed a senior Hezbollah leader and about a dozen other members of the militant group, Israel's military said Saturday as Lebanon raised the attack's death toll to 37, including women and children.
The airstrike during the Friday afternoon rush leveled the eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood in southern Beirut as Hezbollah members were meeting in the basement, according to Israel. Among those killed was Ibrahim Akil, a top Hezbollah official who commanded the group's special forces unit the Radwan Force, the Israeli military said. Also killed was Ahmed Wahbi, a top commander in the group’s military wing, it said.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the attack thwarted Hezbollah's chain of command while taking out Akil, who was responsible for Israeli deaths.
“This is our commitment to the fallen and their loved ones. This is our commitment to the residents of the north. And this is a clear message to all those who seek to harm us," he posted on X, referring to northern Israel, which has been the target of Hezbollah rocket attacks during Israel's nearly yearlong war with Hamas in Gaza.
An Israeli defense spokesperson, meanwhile, announced new safety guidelines for northern Israel, including limits on the size of gatherings, ahead of an expected surge in rocket attacks.
As rescue crews were pulling bodies from the rubble of the leveled Beirut building on Saturday and hoping to find survivors, Israel and Hezbollah continued to trade cross-border fire, with Israel launching an intense wave of airstrikes on southern Lebanon, according to an Associated Press journalist in the area. The militant group responded by firing a bevy of rockets back at Israel, local media reported.
Lebanon's health minister, Firass Abiad, told reporters that at least seven women and three children were among those killed in the building strike. He said another 68 people were injured, including 15 who were hospitalized, and that the casualty figure would likely rise as the search and rescue effort progressed.
It was the deadliest strike on Beirut since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
Hezbollah confirms more than a dozen operatives were killed
Akil, the main target, had been wanted by the U.S. for years for his alleged role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was under U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. State Department last year announced a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to his “identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called Akil's death “a good outcome” and said he had “American blood on his hands” for the embassy attack.
“You know 1983 seems like a long time ago,” Sullivan said. “But for a lot of families and a lot of people, they’re still living with it every day.”
Wahbi was described as a commander who played major roles within Hezbollah for decades and was imprisoned in an Israeli jail in south Lebanon in 1984. Hezbollah said he was one of the “field commanders” during a 1997 ambush in southern Lebanon that left 12 Israeli troops dead.
Hezbollah announced overnight that 15 of its operatives had been killed by Israeli forces, but it didn't how or where they died. Meanwhile, the Israeli army spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said Saturday 16 Hezbollah fighters were killed in Friday's strike.
Rescue workers digging through rubble
Lebanese troops cordoned off the area around the destroyed building as Lebanese Red Cross members stood nearby to take any bodies recovered from the rubble. Hezbollah’s media office took journalists on a tour of the scene, where workers were still digging through the ruins.
Lebanon's minister of public works and transport, Ali Hamieh, said Saturday that 23 people were still missing.
The destroyed building on the crowded Qaim street had 16 apartments. Friday's strike also damaged an adjacent building. With the building that was leveled, the missiles cut through the basement where the Hezbollah meeting was reportedly being held, according to an AP journalist at the scene. Shops in a nearby building were also badly damaged.
Hezbollah bombardments preceded the Israeli strike
Friday's strike came hours 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 defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets.
The militant group said its latest wave of rocket salvos was a response to Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. However, it came days after mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies killed at least 37 people, including two children, and wounded roughly 3,000 others.
Abiad, the Lebanese health minister, said Saturday that hospitals across the country were filled with the wounded.
The pager and walkie-talkie attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, which hasn't confirmed or denied involvement. They marked a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel airstrikes, Hezbollah rocket attacks to continue
It wasn't immediately clear if anyone was killed or wounded in the back-and-forth attacks between Israel and Hezbollah on Saturday. The Israeli military confirmed that about 90 rockets had been fired at northern Israel and that Israel had struck more than 400 rocket launchers in Lebanon during the day.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli defense spokesperson, announced updated safety guidelines for areas north of Haifa, including caps on gatherings of 30 people in open spaces and 300 in enclosed spaces. Work and school can continue if people can reach protected areas in a timely manner. But in practice, the new guidelines likely mean school will be canceled in parts of the north since students and teachers wouldn't be able reach shelters in the required time.
Within an hour of the announcement, Sunday classes were canceled in at least one border region in western Galilee.
Earlier this week, Israel’s security cabinet said stopping Hezbollah’s attacks on the country’s north, which would allow displaced residents to return to their homes, is now an official war goal, as it considers a wider military operation in Lebanon that could spark an all-out conflict. Israel has since sent a powerful fighting force to its northern border.
Hezbollah has maintained that it will halt its strikes only when a cease-fire is reached in Gaza.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’ 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.
Also on Saturday, at an annual military parade in Tehran, Iran’s armed forces unveiled a new ballistic missile, state TV reported. The report said that the Jahad is a single-stage liquid-fuel ballistic missile with a high-explosive warhead and a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), making it theoretically capable of reaching Israel.
The United States says missile development by Iran, a backer of Hezbollah, defies a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Iran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
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Associated Press writers Jack Jeffery and Natalie Melzer in Jerusalem, White House correspondent Zeke Miller in Wilmington, Delaware, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
Bassem Mroue, The Associated Press