Hezbollah leaders among 37 killed in Israeli strike in Lebanon

Hezbollah leaders were among those killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb, Israel’s military said Saturday, as Lebanon raised the death toll from the attack to 37.

Hezbollah leaders were among those killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb , Israel’s military said Saturday, as Lebanon raised the death toll from the attack to 37, including women and children.

Israel and Hezbollah continued to trade fire Saturday, a day after the airstrike claimed the lives of Ibrahim Akil, who was in charge of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, and Ahmed Wahbi, another senior commander in the group’s military wing.

Firas Abiad told reporters that the dead included seven women and three children. He said another 68 people were wounded of whom 15 remained in hospital, adding that search and rescue operations were still ongoing, with the number of casualties likely to rise.

The rare strike hit an apartment block in a densely populated south Beirut neighborhood on Friday afternoon during rush hour. It was the deadliest strike targeting the Lebanese capital 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 in taking 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.”

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” of a 1997 ambush in southern Lebanon that left 12 Israeli troops dead.

Hezbollah announced overnight Friday that 15 of its operatives were killed by Israeli forces, but did not elaborate on the location of these deaths. Meanwhile, the Israeli army spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said on Saturday a total of 16 Hezbollah fighters were killed in the strike.