Death toll rises to 14 in Beirut airstrike that Israel says killed key Hezbollah leader

A strike on a suburb of Lebanon’s capital killed Ibrahim Aqil, a prominent Hezbollah leader, Hezbollah and Israel’s military said Friday.

The rare airstrike on Lebanon’s capital left at least 14 people dead, and destroyed one residential building while also damaging another, Lebanese health and civil defense officials said, escalating a days-long Israeli assault on Hezbollah amid fears of all-out war.

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah vowed retaliation Thursday against Israel for detonations of electronic devices that killed at least 37 people this week and left thousands injured.

Aqil is a Hezbollah leader who sits on the group’s military council and has led Hezbollah’s Operations Unit for two decades, the IDF said.

The State Department said Aqil was a “principal member” of the Hezbollah terrorist Islamic Jihad Organization that claimed the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983 that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, as well as the U.S. Marine Corps barracks bombing in October 1983, which killed 241 U.S. personnel.

Israel’s military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said Friday that Aqil and other members of his Hezbollah unit had been killed.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said four missiles slammed into the buildings in the Jamous area south of Beirut, where support for Hezbollah is strong.

National security spokesman Kirby was ‘not aware of any pre-notification’ of strikes

Asked during a briefing Friday about whether the United States got a heads-up on the Beirut strike, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said: “We’ll let the IDF speak for their operations. I am certainly not aware of any pre-notification of those strikes, and that of course, as you know, is not atypical.”

He said he would let the Israel Defense Forces speak for their own operations, and later added that the United States had no involvement in the incident.

At U.N. Security Council meeting, members urge restraint in escalating conflict

A meeting Friday of the U.N. Security Council on the unraveling situation in the Middle East was sharply focused on Lebanon, with representatives raising alarm bells over the escalation of conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

“The risk of further expansion of this cycle of violence is extremely serious, and poses a grave threat to the stability of Lebanon, Israel and the whole region,” said Rosemary DiCarlo, undersecretary general for political and peacebuilding affairs, of the escalation between Israel and Hezbollah. She urged all actors to “exercise maximum restraint.”

Speaking of the waves of explosions of electronic devices across Lebanon that local health officials said killed 37 and injured thousands this week, DiCarlo said hospitals were “working around-the-clock to help the wounded.”

“Lebanese society, old and young, have been in profound shock and panic,” she said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called the attacks a “new development in warfare,” adding that international humanitarian law protects the equality and dignity of every person, even in times of war.

“Simultaneously targeting thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of attack, violates international human rights law,” Türk said. (Source: The Washington Post)