Israel says attack hits Iran-backed Hezbollah’s intel unit as Lebanon puts two-week death toll over 2,000

A fierce round of new Israeli airstrikes pummeled buildings in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital overnight, with Israel’s military saying Friday that it had targeted another headquarters of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah. The strike came hours before Iran said its foreign minister had arrived in Beirut — the first visit by a senior Iranian official to Lebanon since the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah’s longtime leader, and Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attack, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.

Lebanese media suggested the target could have been a senior Hezbollah figure considered a potential successor to Nasrallah, who was assassinated in a similar Israeli strike in Beirut exactly one week ago.

NOTE: This article includes an image of a dead child that may disturb some readers.

The Reuters news agency cited Lebanon’s health ministry as saying Friday morning that at least 37 people had been killed and 151 others wounded by Israeli strikes in the country over the preceding 24 hours.

Five days of Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon, near Israel’s northern border, and two weeks of airstrikes in that region and in southern Beirut — both Hezbollah strongholds — had killed more than 2,000 people, the health ministry said. More than 1 million people have been driven from their homes, including tens of thousands under Israel evacuation orders in almost 100 towns and villages near the border.

The Israeli military said Friday that during “four days of concentrated activity in southern Lebanon,” it had killed “250 Hezbollah terrorists, including 20 commanders.

The blasts in Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight sent huge fireballs and plumes of smoke rising over the city. Lebanon’s state news agency said at least 10 consecutive strikes hit buildings in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh. 

The Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted the “Hezbollah central intelligence headquarters,” but the country’s Army Radio network said the IDF was still working to determine whether any senior members of the group had been killed in the strikes.

Israel stepped up its assault on Hezbollah — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations — two weeks ago, vowing to push the well-entrenched group’s fighters and weapons back far enough from the border to stop a near-daily hail of rockets and drones targeting Israel. 

Hezbollah started launching those attacks in support of its ideological ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, the day after Hamas sparked the ongoing war in Gaza with its Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The IDF says Hezbollah militants have fired over 10,000 rockets across the border since Oct. 8, 2023. The vast majority of them have been intercepted by Israel’s advanced missile defense systems.

Among those killed in Lebanon this week was U.S. national Kamal Ahmed Jawad, from Dearborn, Michigan. His family has said he was a volunteer who was killed in an airstrike in southern Lebanon.

The White House said in a statement that it was “deeply saddened” by Jawad’s death.

The U.S. government has warned Americans not to travel to Lebanon since mid-September, and urged any citizens in the country to leave via commercial travel routes. As of Friday, the State Department said it had assisted about 350 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members to leave Lebanon on flights organized by the agency. 

Another Israeli airstrike cut off a main highway connecting Lebanon and neighboring Syria, Lebanese state media said Friday. Tens of thousands of people fleeing the fighting have crossed into Syria since Israel started expanding its military operations in Lebanon.

The Israeli military acknowledged striking the area on Thursday to destroy a cross-border tunnel it said was used by Hezbollah to move and store “large quantities of weapons underground,” in addition to other “terrorist infrastructure” nearby. Hezbollah is believed to have obtained many of its weapons from Iran via Syria, according to The Associated Press.

Lebanese officials have said most of the roughly half dozen crossings between Lebanon and Syria remain open. 

The skyrocketing casualties are pushing Lebanon’s already-frail health care system to the brink. At least 40 paramedics and firefighters have been killed in the Israeli strikes over the past three days alone, according to Lebanon’s health minister. That includes about half a dozen medics killed in a strike late Wednesday night that hit a central Beirut office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated with Hezbollah.

The rapidly escalating violence in Lebanon comes weeks after Israel announced a deliberate shift of its military focus to that northern front, but the IDF has continued its operations in the Palestinian territories, too. 

An IDF airstrike overnight in Tulkarem, in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, killed 18 people, according to Palestinian officials. Israel has carried out a number of significant raids in the West Bank, including in Tulkarem, over the last year, usually saying the targets are Hamas fighters or commanders.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said at least 678 Palestinians were killed by Israeli military operations in the West Bank between Oct. 7, 2023 and the end of September 2024, while 12 others were killed by Israeli settlers.

President Biden has backed Israel’s right to respond “in proportion” to Iran’s recent missile attack, but he’s also said more must be done to prevent the close ally’s fight with Iran’s so-called proxy groups from spreading into a wider war in the Middle East. Despite repeated U.S. calls for cease-fires, however, neither Israel, nor Hezbollah or Hamas, have shown any inclination to back down yet.

contributed to this report.