Beirut airstrike: Hezbollah leaders Ibrahim Akil and Ahmed Wahbi among 37 dead in airstrike on Lebanon building, Israel says

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut apartment building killed two senior Hezbollah leaders and a dozen other members of the militant group, the Israeli military said Saturday, as Lebanon put the death toll from the attack at 37, including women and children.

The attack took place Friday afternoon, as Hezbollah members gathered in the basement of a building in a densely populated neighborhood in southern Beirut, Israel said. The victims included Ibrahim Akil, one of Hezbollah's top leaders and the commander of its special forces group, the Radwan Force, and Ahmed Wahbi, another senior member of the group's military wing, the Israeli military said Saturday.

As rescue teams were still pulling bodies from the rubble Saturday and hoping to find survivors, Israel and Hezbollah continued to exchange fire, with Israel launching an intense wave of airstrikes on southern Lebanon, according to an Associated Press reporter in the area. The militant group responded by firing a series of rockets into Israel, local media reported.

The Israeli military confirmed that around 90 rockets were fired at northern Israel on Saturday, while Israeli airstrikes and artillery units targeted a number of sites, including rocket launchers in Lebanon that it said were ready to attack.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters that at least seven women and three children were among the dead in Friday's airstrike in Beirut. He added that 68 others were injured, including 15 hospitalized, and that the toll was likely to rise as search and rescue operations progressed.

It was the deadliest attack in Beirut since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah confirms more than a dozen members killed

Akil, the main target, had been wanted for years by the United States for his alleged role in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was under U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. State Department last year announced a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to “the identification, location, arrest and/or conviction of him.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called Akil's death a “good outcome” and said he had “American blood on his hands” for the embassy attack.

“You know, 1983 seems like a long time ago,” Sullivan said. “But for a lot of families and individuals, this situation continues every day.”

Wahbi has been described as a commander who played a major role in Hezbollah for decades and was imprisoned in an Israeli prison in southern Lebanon in 1984. Hezbollah said he was one of the “field commanders” during a 1997 ambush in southern Lebanon that left 12 Israeli soldiers dead.

Hezbollah announced overnight that 15 of its members had been killed by Israeli forces, without specifying how or where they died. Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Saturday that 16 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in Friday's attack.

Rescuers dig through rubble

Lebanese troops cordoned off the area around the destroyed building, while members of the Lebanese Red Cross stood nearby to retrieve bodies found in the rubble. On Saturday morning, Hezbollah's press office took journalists on a tour of the site, where workers were still digging through the rubble.

Lebanese Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh told reporters at the scene that 23 people were still missing.

The airstrike on busy Qaim Street destroyed an eight-story building with 16 apartments and damaged another next door. The missiles tore through the building and into the basement where the Hezbollah officials were meeting, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

Shops in a neighbouring building were seriously damaged.

Hezbollah bombings preceded Israeli airstrikes

Friday's strike came hours after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments on northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, targeting mostly Israeli military sites. Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets.

The extremist group said its latest wave of rocket fire was in response to Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. However, it comes days after massive explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies killed at least 37 people, including two children, and wounded about 3,000 others.

Abiad, Lebanon's health minister, said Saturday that hospitals across the country were full of wounded people.

The pager and walkie-talkie attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. They mark a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah rocket fire continue

It was not immediately clear whether anyone was killed or injured in the crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah on Saturday.

Earlier this week, Israel's security cabinet said halting Hezbollah attacks in the north of the country, which would allow displaced residents to return home, was now an official war aim, as it considers a broader military operation in Lebanon that could trigger a full-scale conflict. Israel has since sent a powerful fighting force to its northern border.

Hezbollah has said it will stop its strikes only when a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

The retaliatory strikes forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire regularly since Hamas's October 7 offensive on southern Israel triggered the Israeli military's devastating Gaza offensive. But previous cross-border attacks have mostly hit evacuated areas of northern Israel and less populated areas of southern Lebanon.

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Associated Press writer Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem and White House correspondent Zeke Miller in Wilmington, Delaware, contributed to this report.