The Israeli army announced Monday that it had carried out a lethal airstrike over the weekend that targeted a Hezbollah command hub in the Basta district of downtown Beirut.
“The IDF (Israeli military) struck a Hezbollah command centre,” the army told AFP regarding the strike that the Lebanese health ministry said killed 29 people and wounded 67 on Saturday.
Before daybreak on Saturday, the attack struck a residential block in the centre of Beirut, leaving a sizable crater behind, according to AFP journalists on the scene.
Without verifying whether the person had been killed, a senior Lebanese security source told AFP that “a high-ranking Hezbollah officer was targeted” in the attack.
According to Hezbollah spokesperson Amin Cherri, no Lebanese movement leader was singled out in Basta.
Israel has been stepping up its air assault in Lebanon since September 23. Later, it sent in ground soldiers to fight Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The war followed nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
The conflict has killed at least 3,754 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September this year.
On the Israeli side, authorities say at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.
