Key Hezbollah figure killed in rare Israeli strike in Beirut

A rare Israeli air strike in central Beirut has killed Hezbollah’s chief spokesman.

Hezbollah’s media relations chief has been killed in a rare Israeli airstrike in the heart of Beirut, a Lebanese security source said.

Mohammed Afif was killed in a strike on a building in central Beirut’s Ras al-Nabaa district on Sunday, in one of relatively few attacks outside the terrorist group’s strongholds.

Afif was part of Nasrallah’s inner circle and for years was responsible for Hezbollah’s media relations, providing information to journalists, often under the cover of anonymity.

Hezbollah spokesman Mohammad Afif was killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday. Picture: Anwar Amro/AFP

The site of the Israeli air strike which allegedly targeted and killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif in a building at Ras al-Nabaa neighbourhood in Beirut. Picture: Ed Ram/Getty

Two other people were killed and 13 wounded in a separate strike on Mar Elias street in the Lebanese capital on Sunday, the Lebanese health ministry said.

Israel’s military are yet to comment on the strike which killed Afif.

Israel has been heavily bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, since all-out war erupted on September 23, but attacks on central Beirut have been rarer.

A separate Israeli strike targeted a building on Mar Elias street on November 17, 2024. Picture: Fadel Itani/AFP

Lebanese emergency services arrive as a fire burns at the site of the strike. Picture: Ibrahim Amro/AFP

“Israeli warplanes launched a strike on the Mar Elias area,” the official National News Agency said of a densely packed residential and shopping district that also houses people displaced by the conflict.

In the wake of Sunday’s strikes, the education minister said schools and higher education institutions in the Beirut area would remain closed for two days.

At least two people were killed in the strike. Picture: Ibrahim Amro/AFP

34 killed in strike in Gaza

It comes as Gaza’s civil defence agency said 34 people, including children, were killed and dozens were missing, after an Israeli air strike hit a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahia on Sunday.

“The chances of rescuing more wounded are decreasing because of the continuous shooting and artillery shelling,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Israel’s military said there were “ongoing terrorist activities in the area of Beit Lahia” and several strikes were directed at militant targets there.

“We emphasise that there have been continuous efforts to evacuate the civilian population from the active war zone in the area,” the military said in a statement.

It separately announced the death of two soldiers during combat in north Gaza. In other deadly strikes, Bassal said attacks killed 15 people in central Gaza and five in the southern city of Rafah.

Displaced Palestinians fleeing Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip walk on the main Salah al-Din road on November 17. Picture: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP

Also in the south, in the Khan Yunis area, civil defence said an Israeli drone targeted a group of unarmed people securing an aid delivery, killing six.

Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846.

The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry data, which the United Nations consider reliable.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Pope calls for Gaza ‘genocide’ investigation

As fighting continues, Pope Francis has for the first time tackled claims of Israel’s ongoing “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza in extracts from a forthcoming book published on Sunday, urging further investigation into whether Israel’s actions meet the definition.

Titled Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims Towards a Better World the book includes his latest and most forthright intervention into the more than year-long war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” the pontiff wrote in extracts published on the front of Italy’s La Stampa daily on Sunday.

“It should be studied carefully to determine whether (the situation) corresponds to the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies,” he added.

Pope Francis has called for an investigation into whether Israel has committed “genocide” in Gaza. Picture: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

The pontiff has frequently deplored the number of victims of Israel’s operations in Gaza, with the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry putting the toll at least 43,846 people, most of them civilians.

But his call for a probe marks the first time he has publicly used the term genocide – without endorsing it -in the context of Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territory.

Israel’s embassy to the Vatican responded later on Sunday with a post on X, quoting its ambassador Yaron Sideman.

“There was a genocidal massacre on 7 October 2023 of Israeli citizens, and since then, Israel has exercised its right of self-defence against attempts from seven different fronts to kill its citizens,” said the statement.

“Any attempt to call it by any other name is singling out the Jewish State.”