By Maya Gebeily, Tom Perry and James Mackenzie
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs killed a Hezbollah commander who was a senior figure in its rocket division on Tuesday, two security sources in Lebanon said, as fears of a full-blown war in the Middle East grew.
The sources identified the slain commander as Ibrahim Qubaisi. The attack, which killed six people, dealt another blow to the Iran-backed group, which has suffered a series of setbacks at the hands of Israel over the past week.
The pressure on Hezbollah has raised fears that the nearly year-long conflict could erupt and destabilise the oil-producing Middle East, where a conflict between Hamas and Israel is already underway in Gaza with no end in sight.
Israel has struck the Hezbollah-controlled area of the Lebanese capital for a second day in a row, launching a new wave of airstrikes against targets in Lebanon. Hezbollah said it had fired rockets toward northern Israel on Tuesday morning.
After nearly 12 months of war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its attention to the northern border, where Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported an initial death toll of six and 15 wounded in the attack in Beirut, which hit a building in the usually busy Ghobeiry neighborhood. One of the security sources shared a photo showing the damage to the top floor of the five-story building.
The Israeli military on Monday carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah that Lebanese authorities say killed more than 500 people in the country’s deadliest day in decades.
The Israeli government has made securing the northern border and the return of residents there a war priority, setting the stage for a long conflict, while Hezbollah has vowed not to back down until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.
“The situation requires intensive and continuous action in all areas,” said Chief of the Military Staff Herzi Halevi after conducting a security assessment, vowing to keep up the pressure on Hezbollah.
Lebanese authorities said 558 people were killed, including 50 children and 94 women, in Monday’s Israeli airstrikes. Another 1,835 were wounded, they said, and tens of thousands more fled for safety.
The death toll and the intensity of the attacks by the Middle East’s most powerful and advanced militaries have sown panic in Lebanon, which suffered devastating destruction when Israel and Hezbollah clashed in 2006.
“We are waiting for victory, God willing, because as long as we have a neighbour like Israel, we will not be able to sleep peacefully,” said Hassan Omar, a Beirut resident.
Afif Ibrahim, a taxi driver from southern Lebanon, said: “They (Israel) want us (the Lebanese) to kneel, but we kneel only before God in our prayers; we do not bow our heads to anyone but God.”
CALLS FOR DIPLOMACY
Calls for diplomacy are growing as the conflict worsens, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk urging all states and influential actors to prevent further escalation in Lebanon.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told MSNBC he believed “a path forward” could still be found to de-escalate the situation and reach a diplomatic solution.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged restraint and called for a de-escalation on the border between Lebanon and Israel, telling his ruling Labour Party: “I call once again on all sides to step back from the brink.”
The fighting has raised fears that the United States, Israel’s close ally, and Iran, a regional power with proxies across the Middle East – Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq – could be drawn into a wider war.
Last week, Hezbollah suffered heavy losses when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded in the worst security breach in its history.
The operation was largely blamed on Israel, which has a long history of sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, but has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
Israel’s intelligence and technological prowess have given it a strong advantage in both Lebanon and Gaza. It has hunted down and killed senior Hezbollah commanders and Hamas leaders.
But Hezbollah has proven resilient during decades of hostilities with Israel. The group, founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 1982 to counter an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, is a more formidable foe than Hamas.
Hezbollah has used a new rocket, Fadi 3, in an attack on an Israeli army base, the group announced in a message posted on Telegram on Tuesday.
Its press office in Israel was dropping leaflets with a “very dangerous” barcode in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, warning that scanning it with a phone would “remove all information” from any device.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Hezbollah’s press office did not say whether anything else was written on the leaflets.
The pan-Arab television network Al-Mayadeen reported that a journalist working for the network’s website, Hadi al-Sayyed, had been killed in an Israeli strike in his hometown on Monday.
This brings to four the number of journalists killed in Lebanon since October, including two more Al-Mayadeen journalists killed last November and Reuters visual journalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed by Israeli tank fire last October.