GAZA STRIP: Israeli strikes killed dozens in Gaza Sunday, the civil defence there said, and also hit a central Beirut district where a Lebanese source reported the death of Hezbollah’s spokesman in one raid.
A Lebanese security source said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif was killed in a strike on Beirut’s Ras al-Nabaa district, one of relatively few attacks outside the group’s strongholds. Israel’s military declined to comment.
In the latest violence in besieged Gaza, the civil defence agency said Israeli air raids killed at least 46 people.
The deadliest strike, in the middle of the night in Beit Lahia in the north, killed 26 people, including women and children, and left at least 59 others buried under the rubble, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
“We heard the Israeli strike, and the whole area was shaking,” said Jaber Ghabayen, whose family lived in the razed building.
“I was at a relatives’ place, and we all thought that death was near,” he told AFP.
Bassal said three separate attacks on refugee camps in central Gaza killed 15 people, and an Israeli drone strike on the southern city of Rafah killed five.
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846.
The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry figures, which the United Nations considers reliable.
The October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
On Israel’s second front in the north, the Lebanese security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah’s Afif was killed in a strike on a central Beirut building which houses the office of the Lebanese branch of Syria’s ruling Baath party.
Ali Hijazi, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch, “confirmed the death of Hezbollah media official” Afif, the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Lebanese state media earlier said the Israeli strike on Ras al-Nabaa district killed at least one person and wounded three.
Previous strikes claimed by Israel have killed senior Hezbollah officials, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September.