2024-09-21 07:22:22
CTK
Updated 1 hour ago
Israel’s military said it killed Ibrahim Akil, Hezbollah’s operations chief and head of the movement’s elite Radwan forces, in its strike on Beirut on Friday. Hezbollah also confirmed Akil’s killing.
According to AFP, Akil was the second-highest-ranking official in Hezbollah’s military hierarchy. The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 14 people were killed and 66 injured in the strike that hit the southern part of the metropolis.
Hizbullah has identified Aqeel as one of its great leaders. He said he was killed “on the way to Jerusalem,” a formulation he uses when the person in question was killed by Israel.
The Israeli military says it has killed Akhil and about a dozen other top Hezbollah commanders. According to her, they prepared a “plan for the occupation of Galilee”. This name refers to the area in the north of Israel. According to the army, it was a plan similar to the terrorist attack of October 7 last year, which was carried out by the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas, the Times of Israel website wrote. According to an army spokesman, the slain Hezbollah members were in charge of launching rockets into Israeli territory.
“The target of the Israeli strike was the commander of the forces, Radvan Ibrahim Akil, who was killed,” an AFP source said. Akíl’s death was confirmed to Reuters by two other sources. According to them, Akíl died while negotiating with other representatives of the Radván forces.
“The series of actions in the new phase (of the war) will continue until we achieve our goal – the safe return of the people in the north (of Israel) to their homes,” said Israeli Defense Minister Joav Galant. “Our goals are clear and our actions speak for themselves,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Hezbollah previously attacked seven different targets on Israeli territory along the Lebanese border with Katyusha rockets, including several air defense bases and the headquarters of an armored brigade, which it claimed was the first time it hit. He added that he sent the rockets in retaliation for Israeli strikes on villages and homes in southern Lebanon.
On Thursday evening, the army said that its planes, during more than two hours and about 50 airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, hit about a hundred rocket launchers, consisting of about a thousand barrels, which were ready for immediate fire on Israeli territory. Lebanese security sources Reuters described these Israeli strikes as the most intense in the last year.
The UN Interim Mission in Lebanon on Friday morning called for an immediate easing of tensions and hostilities on the Lebanese-Israeli border, which they said had “significantly intensified” over the past twelve hours.
The current conflict between Israel and the Shiite movement Hezbollah, which flared up last October after the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip, gained extraordinary momentum this week after an unprecedented attack on members of Hezbollah through explosions of their communication devices. Explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 people and injured around 3,500 others, hundreds of them seriously. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but Hezbollah has attributed it to it.
The leader of the movement, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened the Jewish state with retaliation on Thursday. In doing so, he declared that Israel had crossed all limits and had de facto declared war on Hezbollah. Friday’s volley of rockets fired at Israel was more powerful than other attacks, the AP noted.
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