Ahmed Wahbi is amongst greater than a dozen senior officers killed in an IDF strike in Beirut
Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has acknowledged that one in all its senior commanders, Ahmed Wahbi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday. Ibrahim Aqil, the pinnacle of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, was additionally killed together with a dozen different officers.
Hezbollah introduced Wahbi’s dying to Reuters early on Saturday, a number of hours after the Israel Protection Forces (IDF) claimed to have killed him. In response to the IDF, Wahbi oversaw coaching for Hezbollah’s Radwan particular forces unit till early 2024, plotted a raid on Galilee alongside the identical traces as Hamas’ October 7 assault from Gaza, and orchestrated quite a few “infiltration and capturing assaults” on Israeli territory.
Wahbi was killed in an airstrike on an condo constructing in Beirut on Friday morning. Twelve different Hezbollah officers, together with a number of Radwan unit commanders, have been among the many useless, the IDF claimed. Probably the most senior of those commanders was Ibrahim Aqil, who the IDF claimed led the unit and served as head of Hezbollah’s operations since 2004.
The US blamed Aqil for the April 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 individuals, and positioned a $7 million bounty on his head in 2019.
The airstrike killed a complete of 37 individuals, together with three youngsters and 7 ladies, in response to Lebanon’s Well being Ministry. Greater than 60 individuals have been injured, together with the household of an RT Arabic reporter who lived in an adjoining constructing.
Shortly earlier than Wahbi’s dying was introduced, Hezbollah fired a whole lot of rockets into Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. Israeli fighter jets struck some 180 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response, the IDF stated, claiming that the strikes destroyed hundreds of rocket launcher barrels that have been prepared to fireplace into Israeli territory.
Whereas Hezbollah had been waging a low-intensity marketing campaign towards Israel for the reason that begin of the Israel-Hamas struggle final yr, the sudden detonation of hundreds of pagers and radios utilized by the group earlier this week sparked fears of a wider regional struggle breaking out. A number of American, Arab, and Israeli sources have recognized Israel’s Mossad intelligence company because the perpetrator behind the pager explosions.
The blasts marked the start of “a brand new part” within the battle, Israeli Protection Minister Yoav Gallant declared on Wednesday, asserting that Israel would shift “forces, sources, and power” from Gaza towards Lebanon.
Past a number of rocket launches on Friday and Saturday, Hezbollah has not responded to the most recent Israeli assaults. The group’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, has warned that Israel will obtain “a simply punishment,” including that any try by the IDF to invade southern Lebanon would have “dire penalties” for the Jewish state.
