BEIRUT/ TEL AVIV - At least two people were martyred and 76 others injured by several Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said Friday.
The ministry added this was a preliminary casualty count. Rescuers continue to search through the rubble and the ministry “expects the casualty count to rise in the coming hours.” An Israeli official told CNN that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was the target of the strikes on Friday.
An Israeli official confirms to The Times of Israel that Friday’s strike on Beirut targeted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. “It’s very hard to imagine him coming out alive from a strike like that,” says the official.
The official’s comments came as Hebrew media reports cite a growing Israeli assessment that Nasrallah was killed in the strike on Hezbollah’s underground headquarters.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has convened an emergency session of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council at his home, the New York Times reports, citing two Iranian officials with knowledge of the meeting.
The officials say the meeting was called following the Israeli strike on a Hezbollah command center in southern Beirut targeting the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
US President Joe Biden tells reporters that the US had no prior knowledge of the major Israeli strike targeting a Hezbollah command center in Beirut and that Washington did not participate in the operation.
“We’re still gathering information. I can tell you the United States had no knowledge of, or participation in, the IDF actions… I’ll have more to say when I have more information,” Biden says.
The Iranian embassy in Beirut said the Israeli strike Friday “changes the rules of the game” and warned Israel would be “punished.”
“The Israeli regime once again commits a bloody massacre, targeting heavily populated residential neighborhoods, spewing false justifications to try and cover up its brutal crimes,” the embassy posted on X (formerly Twitter). “There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represent a serious escalation that changes the rules of the game, and that its perpetrator will be punished appropriately,” it added.
An Israeli security official said Friday that any ground operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon would be swift, as tensions rapidly escalate after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire.
The comments come after top Israeli ministers rejected a truce plan proposed by Israel’s key backer the United States and its allies, seeking to prevent all-out war.
The security official, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity, said Israeli forces were “preparing... every day” for a potential ground invasion.
“We will try to do it as short as we can,” said the official, without providing a clear timeline or specifying what would be the objectives of a ground campaign.
Hezbollah fighters began firing on Israel shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, in what the Lebanese movement says is in support of its allied Palestinian group.
Since Monday, Israeli warplanes have bombarded Hezbollah strongholds around the country, sparking an exodus of about 118,000 people, the UN says.
During that time more than 700 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the health ministry.
The security official pushed back on accusations that the Israeli strikes were killing civilians in large numbers, calling the campaign “very precise, very accurate”.
“It’s not like they publish the names of the dead. Many of them were Hezbollah,” he said, though he also accused Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields.
“This phenomenon of putting ballistic missiles inside an apartment, it’s crazy. Cruise missiles in the living room. Every morning you say hello to your wife, hello to the cruise missile.”