Israel Strikes Hezbollah Leader in Beirut

At about 7:30 pm Tuesday evening, the Israel Defence Forces says it carried out a ‘targeted airstrike’ on a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, seeking to kill the Hezbollah commander responsible for the Majdal Shams rocket attack on Saturday, which killed 12 children who were playing football.

The building is located in an area controlled by Hezbollah. So, Hezbollah may see this Israeli strike as an escalation in the fighting and will almost certainly strike back. But most observers continue to believe that neither side wants to ramp things up to a full-scale war. That is almost certainly why the Israelis have chosen a strike targeting the commander responsible for the Saturday rocket attack.

Lebanese media report that at least one person was killed in this evening’s strike and several people have been injured in what is a densely populated area of Beirut.

Some media reports have emphasised that Hezbollah were ‘uncharacteristically quick’ to deny responsibility for Saturday’s rocket strike on Majdal Shams and seem to want to place credence upon the suggestion that an Israeli missile killed the children.

However, in this report by BBC News, Hugo Bachega acknowledges that Hezbollah had initially claimed launching an attack on the area of Magdal Shams on Saturday but then denied responsibility after the scale of the casualties became clear.