At least 31 people, including three children and seven women were killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on Friday, the Lebanese health ministry told a televised news conference on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Reuters reports that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that Israel is committing “shameless crimes” against children, not combatants.
According to a report in The Guardian, his comments came a day after an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killed 31 people.
Earlier, The Associated Press reported that Israel launched a "rare" airstrike that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated southern Beirut neighborhood on Friday. It was the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in decades, the report said.
The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya district killed Ibrahim Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, as well as 10 other Hezbollah operatives.
“We will continue pursuing our enemies in order to defend our citizens, even in Dahiya, in Beirut,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, describing the Israeli strike that targeted Akil as part of “a new phase of war.”
Several hours later, Hezbollah confirmed Akil’s death. In a statement, the Lebanese militant group described Akil as “a great jihadist leader” and said he had “joined the procession of his brothers, the great martyr leaders, after a blessed life full of jihad, work, wounds, sacrifices, dangers, challenges, achievements, and victories.”
Meanwhile, at least 22 Palestinians including 13 children were killed by an Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported.
At least 119 people have been killed and 209 wounded in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the last 72 hours, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
This brings the total toll to 41,391. At least 95,760 have also been wounded since October last year, the ministry said.