The rescue efforts continued on Saturday among the rubble after the Israeli air strike on a residential building in a suburb in southern Lebanon. Among the 37 confirmed dead are at least three children, according to Lebanon's Health Department.
Earlier, the extremist Islamist militia Hezbollah had published a list of 15 names of members who were killed, and hailed them as participants "in the holy war". Ibrahim Aqil was the highest-ranking, and so internationally notorious that the US had put a bounty on his head of $7 million.
Civilian Casualties
Another man, Ahmad Wahabi, is referred to in the list as "commander" – a title Hezbollah rarely uses, which suggests that he had a significant role in the movement's warfare, according to The Times of Israel.
On Saturday, the clashes continued in the border area between Lebanon and Israel. The Israeli military claims to have hit, among other things, thousands of rocket launchers. The artillery fire against southern Lebanon continued with high intensity during the evening. According to the Israeli military, Hezbollah has fired nearly a hundred rockets at Israeli targets.
Friday's attack in Beirut was carried out with drones during rush hour. The attacked building is located in a densely populated area in al-Dahiya (Dahieh) in southern Beirut. According to IDF, the Hezbollah men had gathered in the basement for a meeting within the elite unit Radwan.
1983 Attack
IDF claims that the meeting was part of the planning of a large-scale Hezbollah attack on northern Israel, similar to the one Hamas carried out on October 7 last year, which became the starting point for the Gaza War.
Ibrahim Aqil was sanctioned by the US. The reason for this was that he was accused of, among other things, involvement in the bombing attacks on the US embassy and a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983, where 300 people died. The reward of approximately 71 million kronor was announced by the US State Department last year.
Aqil is the second high-ranking Hezbollah commander to be killed by Israel in recent attacks. In July, Fuad Shukr was killed in an air attack.
