Beirut:
A Hezbollah official was among four people killed Tuesday in an Israeli strike on south Beirut, Israel and a Hezbollah source said, the second such raid during a fragile four-month ceasefire.
Lebanon’s leaders condemned the attack, which came without warning at around 3:30 am (0030 GMT) during the Eid al-Fitr Muslim holiday marking the end of the Ramadan fasting period.
It struck after Israel on Friday raided Beirut’s southern suburbs — a stronghold of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group — after issuing an evacuation warning.
Lebanon’s health ministry said four people, including a woman, were killed in the latest strike.
The top two floors of a multi-storey building were destroyed, an AFP journalist said.
Ismael Noureddine, who lives in the building opposite, said his family was screaming.
“We couldn’t see each other because of all the dust,” he told AFP, describing “a very big explosion”, followed by another.
A source close to Hezbollah, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to brief the media, told AFP the strike killed Hassan Bdair, Hezbollah’s “deputy head for the Palestinian file” who was “at home with his family”.
Israel’s military confirmed it killed Bdair in a joint statement with the Shin Bet domestic security agency.
The statement said Bdair “recently operated in cooperation with the Hamas terrorist organisation, directed Hamas terrorists, and assisted them in planning and advancing a significant and imminent terror attack against Israeli civilians”.
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