Key Hezbollah leader, commanders killed in strike in Beirut, Israel says

(NEW YORK) — A key Hezbollah commander and his chain of command were killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on Friday, according to the Israel Defense Forces, as tensions continue to rise along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Ibrahim Aqil, a senior member of Hezbollah and the target of the strike in southern Beirut, was killed, according to the Israeli army. Top operatives and the chain of command of the Raduan unit were also killed in the strike, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Aqil and the commanders who were killed were allegedly planning to occupy Galilee, in what Israel claimed would have been similar to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement.

Aqil, also known as Tahsin, served on Hezbollah’s highest military body and was a principal member of Islamic Jihad Organization, which claimed responsibility for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people, according to the U.S. Department of State.

In 2023, the U.S. announced a reward of up to $7 million for any information leading to the “identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction of Hizballah key leader Ibrahim Aqil,” according to the U.S. Award for Justice program. Aqil also directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon and held them there in the 1980s.

At least 14 people were killed and 66 others injured in the Israeli strike in southern Beirut, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

Search and rescue operations are underway after Israel struck two residential buildings in the Jamous area in the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to the Lebanese Civil Defense.

Hagari said Israel will “continue to act to undermine the capabilities of and harm.”

About 120 rockets were fired from Lebanon toward Israel by midday on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces told ABC News, one day after Israel struck more than 100 Hezbollah targets within Lebanon, the military said.

The IDF also said in a statement it struck a terrorist in Kfarkela earlier Friday, but did not say who was targeted or whether the individual was killed, saying in a statement, “Earlier today, IDF soldiers identified a Hezbollah terrorist entering a terrorist infrastructure site used by Hezbollah in the area of Kfarkela in southern Lebanon. Swiftly, the IAF struck the site from which the terrorist was operating.”

The targeted strike in Beirut came in response to scores of rockets launched from Lebanon toward northern Israel on Friday. The IDF said it also struck Hezbollah targets in several other cities in southern Lebanon.

Israeli emergency medical services raised their national alert state to level 4 — the highest level and defined as maximum readiness for an all-out war — an Israeli official told ABC News.

Officials with the U.S. and other international leaders urged Hezbollah and Israel to seek diplomatic paths to de-escalate the conflict.

U.S. officials have this week privately urged their Israeli counterparts to find a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday. He added that U.S. was committed to the defense of Israel from all terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies.

“We will continue to stand by Israel’s right to defend itself,” Miller said during a press briefing Thursday. “But we don’t want to see any party escalate this conflict, period.”

Miller and other U.S. officials joined a chorus of international officials who were also asking Israel and Hezbollah to step back from a conflict that’s at risk of spreading and increasing in intensity. Israel and Hezbollah have for most of the last 11 months fired a near-daily volley of projectiles across the border.

Those strikes appeared on Thursday to take on a new urgency, as Israel launched a series of strikes on Hezbollah targets within Lebanon. The strikes were among the largest in almost a year. And they followed an attack with explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies in both Lebanon and Syria, a deadly surprise attack that Israel was behind, according to a source.

A spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon told Reuters on Friday the agency was also calling for de-escalation after seeing this week “a heavy intensification of the hostilities across the Blue Line,” a reference to the border between Israel and Lebanon.

European leaders had on Thursday made similar pleas. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy both called for de-escalation in the Middle East in separate public statements.

Macron posted a message in French on social media addressing the Lebanese people, saying they cannot live in fear of an imminent war and conflict must be avoided.

Lammy said he met with his American, French, German and Italian counterparts Thursday and all four of them agreed that “we want to see a negotiated political settlement” between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group.

“We are all very, very clear that we want to see a negotiated political settlement so that Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel and indeed, Lebanese can return to their homes,” Lammy told reporters Thursday.

He added, “And that’s why tonight I’m calling for an immediate cease-fire from both sides so that we can get to that settlement, that political settlement that’s required

ABC News’ Jordana Miller, Dana Savir and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.