The son-in-law of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed last week in a massive Israeli strike in Beirut, was also killed in an Israeli raid in Damascus Wednesday, an NGO said.
“Hassan Jaafar Al Qasir, the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah, was among two Lebanese victims of the Israeli raid which targeted an apartment in a residential building in the Mazze district of Damascus,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a claim a source close to Hezbollah confirmed to AFP.
Israel’s military said it also killed 15 Hezbollah militants in an air strike on southern Lebanon, as the Iran-backed movement said it thwarted an Israeli advance at the border.
Israel announced this week that its troops had started “ground raids” into parts of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah, after days of heavy bombardment on areas across the country where the group holds sway.
The bombing has killed more than 1,000 people, according to Lebanese health ministry figures, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic and political crisis.
Israel, at war with Hamas in Gaza since its October 7 attack, shifted its focus to securing its northern border with Lebanon, the scene of near-daily clashes since Hezbollah launched low-intensity strikes in support of its Palestinian ally.
The clashes have forced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides to flee their homes, and Israel has vowed to ensure its citizens can return.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it conducted a strike that killed 15 Hezbollah fighters in the Bint Jbeil municipality in south Lebanon, an area that had been heavily damaged during Israel’s last war with the militant group in 2006.
Israel told Lebanese to evacuate another 25 villages in the south, while Hezbollah issued a statement saying it had fought off a bid by the Israeli army to advance at Fatima’s Gate, another point along the border.
It also kept up its strikes on Israel, saying it had fired a barrage of rockets at the city of Tiberias in what it said was a response to the bombardment of Lebanese “towns, villages and civilians”.
Earlier Thursday, Israel carried out a deadly air raid in central Beirut after eight of its ground troops were killed in combat near the border.
Multiple explosions in Beirut overnight were audible from kilometres (miles) away. AFP correspondents said buildings shook and they saw columns of smoke rising into the sky above Lebanon’s capital in the morning.
The strike in the heart of Beirut hit an emergency services rescue facility run by Hezbollah, killing seven workers, the service said.
“We are peaceful civilians in our homes,” said Hassan Ammar, 82, who had been staying in the high-rise building whose walls were partly blown out by the strike.
The building near downtown Beirut had become Ammar’s temporary home after he fled south Lebanon.
Israel’s military on Thursday did not immediately comment on the central Beirut strike, but said it had struck about 200 Hezbollah targets “in Lebanese territory”.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said Israel’s attacks may have displaced up to one million people.
The strike came after Hezbollah backer Iran launched its second, and largest, direct missile attack on Israel, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn that Tehran would pay.
As Israel weighs retaliation for the Iranian missile strike, President Joe Biden said the United States was “fully supportive” of the ally but ruled out supporting a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Iran, which arms and funds Lebanon’s Hezbollah, said it would step up its response if Israel counterattacked.
Israel’s ground operations and continued bombing follow the decimation of Hezbollah’s leadership in a series of strikes, including a massive bombing in south Beirut that killed the group’s chief Nasrallah and other commanders last week.
Israel intercepted most of the 200 missiles launched by Iran. Two people in Israel were wounded by shrapnel and a school building was damaged.
In the Israel-occupied West Bank, a Palestinian was killed when “pieces of a rocket fell from the sky and hit him”, Jericho governor Hussein Hamayel said.