Israel on Tuesday carried out an airstrike against what it said was the senior Hezbollah commander responsible for a rocket attack over the weekend that killed a dozen Syrian children and young adults in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Lebanon has been holding its breath for days, with speculation running rampant over what Israel's response would be following Saturday's missile attack that hit a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a Syrian town in the Golan Heights.
Israel blamed Hezbollah for the attack, an accusation the Iran-backed faction denied. A day later, the Israeli air force said it had struck seven Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon.
Tuesday night’s airstrikes appeared to be more limited, hitting a residential building near a hospital in the Hezbollah-dominated Beirut suburb of Dahieh. Residents near the blast site said they heard three explosions. The state-run National News Agency said it was the work of a drone that fired three missiles.
Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health said one woman was killed along with two children. Seventy-four other people were injured, three of them seriously, the ministry said.
“The ground shook. I felt it very close,” said a gas station employee who asked not to be identified.
A 27-year-old architect who gave his name as Jawad said he was on the street when the attack occurred.
“The first missile landed and barely a second passed when another one arrived,” he said. The missiles targeted near the top corner of an eight-story building, leaving at least one apartment full of rubble and damaging several others.
Jawad pointed to the glass on the street. “This is all coming from the upper floors of the buildings around us,” he said.
The Israeli military claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had “carried out a targeted strike in Beirut against the commander responsible for the killing of the children in Majdal Shams and the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians.”
A later statement identified him as Fuad Shukr, also known as Hajj Mohsin, and described him as the “right-hand man” of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior member of the group’s jihad council. The United States had placed a $5 million bounty on Shukr’s head for “playing[ing] a central role” in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.
“Hezbollah has crossed the red line,” wrote Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying in a statement to Reuters news agency: “We will lodge a complaint with the United Nations.”
Pro-Hezbollah officials, speaking on local media channels, said the operation had failed to kill its intended target.
Although Hezbollah and Israel are longtime enemies, fighting between the two in recent years had been limited to little more than the occasional exchange of letters. But tensions escalated after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent military offensive in Gaza. Hezbollah stepped up a rocket campaign along the Israel-Lebanon border in solidarity with Hamas militants.
Since then, the tense calm that reigned on the border has been replaced by an almost daily exchange of fire. Both sides insist they do not want all-out war, but say they are prepared for it.
The United States is stepping up diplomatic efforts to ensure that hostilities do not escalate into all-out war.
“I unequivocally support Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism, and that is precisely what Hezbollah is doing,” US Vice President Kamala Harris said at a news conference after the attack.
“However, we must work to find a diplomatic solution to end the attacks.”
US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said: “We let Israel speak for its own military operations. We reiterate our clear position: our commitment to Israel’s security is unwavering and unwavering in the face of all Iranian-backed threats, including Hezbollah.”
