20 killed in Israeli strike on central Beirut said to target top Hezbollah commander
Muhammad Haydar’s fate unclear; overnight strike not preceded by evacuation orders, comes as rockets trigger sirens around Haifa, with impact in Kiryat Ata
A large-scale Israeli airstrike conducted without warning on a central Beirut building killed at least 20 people and wounded scores more, Lebanese officials said, with media reports indicating that the strike targeted a top Hezbollah leader.
The strike was an attempt to kill top Hezbollah commander Muhammad Haydar, the al-Arabiya news site reported. The report was later confirmed by an Israeli defense source to the Kan public broadcaster.
The Saudi Al Hadath news outlet cited unnamed Israeli sources as saying the strike had failed to kill Haydar. The IDF has not commented on the matter.
Muhammad Haydar
At least 20 people were killed in the strike in Beirut and 66 were wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The strike on central Beirut, which appeared to have used bunker-buster bombs, came as the Israeli Air Force conducted several waves of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Hezbollah’s Dahiyah stronghold in Beirut’s south. The Israel Defense Forces issued evacuation warnings ahead of those strikes.
Similar strikes carried out without warning outside of the Dahiyah have tended to target high-level Hezbollah members.
Haydar is a member of Hezbollah’s top military body, the Jihad Council, though his exact current position in the Iran-backed terror group is currently unknown. According to Kan, Haydar and another top Hezbollah commander, Haytham Ali Tabataba’i, have been Hezbollah’s de-facto military leaders since Israel killed the terror group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with most of the group’s top military brass in a wave of recent strikes.
A Hezbollah parliamentarian between 2005 and 2009, Haydar had been a close advisor to Nasrallah until the latter was assassinated in September. In 2019, the United States listed Haydar as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” for his role in Hezbollah.
The strike said to have targeted Haydar came as a rocket barrage from Lebanon triggered sirens in Haifa and surrounding communities. The IDF said that the barrage comprised five rockets, several of which were intercepted by air defenses.
One of the rockets impacted an industrial zone in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Ata, causing slight damage to nearby buildings.
There were no injuries.
The Beirut strike, which rocked the working-class neighborhood of Basta at about 4 a.m. local time, destroyed an eight-story building, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said. The Lebanese civil defense agency reported at least 11 people were killed and 23 injured.
Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.
Israel used bunker-buster bombs in the strike, leaving a deep crater, the NNA said. Security sources said at least four bombs were dropped in the attack. Beirut smelled strongly of explosives hours after the attack.
It marked the fourth Israeli airstrike this week targeting a central area of Beirut. The bulk of Israel’s attacks on the capital have targeted Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh.
A later strike, which was preceded by an evacuation order, hit the neighborhood of Hadath in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Also on Saturday a drone strike killed one person and injured another on a beach in the southern port city of Tyre, according to the National News Agency.
The people killed and injured in Tyre were fishermen, the NNA said. An Associated Press journalist, who saw the strike from a nearby hotel overlooking the beach, said he had watched the fishermen set up their nets beforehand and they appeared to both be young teenagers.
An Israeli military source told The Times of Israel that the strike in Tyre had targeted Hezbollah operatives. The IDF did not immediately issue a statement on the strike.
On Friday, two waves of Israeli airstrikes on the coastal city targeted Hezbollah’s Aziz regional division, responsible for rocket fire on Israel from the western sector of southern Lebanon.
Over the past day, the IDF said Saturday, Israel’s fighter jets have struck several Hezbollah command rooms, weapons storehouses, and other terror infrastructure sites in the Dahiyeh. The military released footage of the strikes.
The IDF said the targets were embedded in civilian areas, and that it took steps to limit harm to the population during the strikes.
The strikes came as heavy ground fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah continued in southern Lebanon, with Israeli troops pushing farther from the border.
The IDF said that over the past week, the elite reserve Alpinist Unit, under the 810th “Mountains” Regional Brigade, had located an Iranian-made recoilless rifle, an artillery piece, during an operation on the Lebanese side of Mount Dov, along the border.
The troops found rocket launchers and other projectiles at the same Hezbollah site, the military said.
Meanwhile, the IDF blamed Hezbollah for a Friday rocket barrage that lightly wounded four Italian soldiers from UNIFIL, the international observer force in southern Lebanon.
The IDF said the projectiles, which hit a UNIFIL base near southern Lebanon’s Chamaa, were launched from the village of Deir Qanoun al-Nahr.
Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had also said initial evidence indicated the terror group was behind the “unacceptable” incident.
Italy and other European allies have accused Israel of targeting UNIFIL and rejected Jerusalem’s demand that the peacekeeping force vacate its positions while the IDF pursues Hezbollah.
Israel, in turn, has accused UNIFIL of failing to prevent Hezbollah from building terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon, forcing Israel to act.
Hezbollah-led forces have attacked northern Israel from Lebanon on a near-daily basis since October 8, 2023 — a day after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Fearing Hezbollah would invade the north, Israel evacuated towns along the Lebanese border. Some 60,000 northerners remain displaced amid relentless rocket fire by Hezbollah, which says its attacks are in support of Gaza.
Hezbollah has also expanded its attacks to target cities in central and northern Israel with rockets, in addition to the attacks on the border, though in recent days the IDF has seen a decrease in the number of attacks.
The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 44 civilians. In addition, 71 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September. Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon.
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