Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which has been exchanging fire with Israel for months, yesterday announced that two commanders of its elite operations unit had been killed by an Israeli strike on Beirut, which authorities said left 37 people dead.
Health Minister Firass Abiad said three children were also killed in Friday’s strike on an underground meeting room, which AFP journalists said left a huge crater in a densely populated neighbourhood of the capital’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in a statement yesterday, decried “horrific massacres” and said he had cancelled a trip to the United Nations General Assembly “in light of the developments linked to the Israeli aggression on Lebanon”.
Israel’s military said it also targeted a Hamas command centre in Gaza City that it alleged was “embedded inside” a school, where rescuers said 21 people were killed in adjacent buildings used as a shelter.
Friday’s strike also followed sabotage attacks on pagers and two-way radios used by Hezbollah on Tuesday and Wednesday, which killed 39 people. Hezbollah blamed Israel, which has not commented.
Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters have battled each other along the Israel-Lebanon border since the Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Hezbollah says it is acting in support of Hamas.
Months of near-daily cross-border exchanges have killed hundreds in Lebanon, mostly fighters, and dozens in Israel and the annexed Golan Heights, forcing tens of thousands on both sides to flee their homes.
GAZA SCHOOL STRIKE
Yesterday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on Al-Zaytoun School C, which had been turned into a displaced shelter, killed 21 people including 13 children and six women, one of them pregnant.
In late August, the United Nations said Israel had struck at least 23 school shelters since July 4. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,391 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
