Israel says Hezbollah military chief killed in airstrike

Israel carried out an airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut yesterday that killed at least 12 people and wounded 66, in what it said was a targeted assassination of a senior Hezbollah leader.

- William Christou Lorenzo Tondo

The Israeli military said the strike killed Ibrahim Aqil, a figure on the group's top military council who is wanted by the US for his alleged connection with the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut. There was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah, but two security sources in Lebanon confirmed his death, which sharply escalated already high tensions between Israel and the Iranbacked Lebanese group.

Israel said Aqil, the leader of Hezbollah's elite Radwan special forces, was killed along with 10 other senior commanders of the unit. Security sources told Reuters the targeted area was near key Hezbollah installations.

The strike came as the foreign secretary, David Lammy, discussed preparations to evacuate Britons from Lebanon, having already urged UK nationals to leave the country given the hostilities with Israel.

He repeated the Foreign Office's warning to British nationals, urging them to leave Lebanon "while commercial options remain", as the situation "could deteriorate rapidly".

The strike was the latest in a series of attacks that rocked Lebanon this week, after an extraordinary twostage operation that made thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies commonly carried by Hezbollah members explode simultaneously. The operation, presumed to be by Israel, left more than 3,000 people wounded and at least 37 dead.

It was the third time Beirut, Lebanon's capital, has been hit by an Israeli airstrike since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel started on 8 October last year after the former launched rockets "in solidarity" with Hamas's attack the previous day.

Videos of the aftermath showed burnt cars and rubble strewn across the street from a building whose first two floors appeared to have been blown out. Lebanon's National News Agency reported that four rockets had struck the building in Jamous, a residential area in southern Beirut, during rush hour.