Israel has carried out an airstrike on southern Beirut targeting a senior Hezbollah commander who a military spokesperson said was responsible for a rocket attack that killed 12 children at the weekend.
Fuad Shukur, the reported target, also known as Hajj Mohsin, is the head of the group’s operations centre, with a $5m (£3.9m) bounty on his head in America over his role in the 1983 bombing of a US marine barracks in the Lebanese capital.
The attack, just after sunset on Tuesday, hit a block of flats in Haret Hreik, a suburb known as a Hezbollah stronghold, causing a blast heard across the city.
It killed one woman and injured several other people, Lebanon’s state-run National news agency reported. It was not immediately clear if Shukur was at the site or among the casualties.
Beirut had been bracing for Israel’s response to a rocket strike on a children’s football match in the occupied Golan Heights three days earlier. Israel and the US have blamed Hezbollah for the attack. Hezbollah has denied responsibility.
The US had been leading a global diplomatic effort to deter Israel from hitting Beirut or Lebanese infrastructure, in an attempt to prevent escalation into full blown regional conflict.
In a post on X after the strike, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said: “Hezbollah crossed the red line.”
The White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said soon afterwards that the US does not believe war between Hezbollah and Israel is inevitable, echoing earlier comments by the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin.
In Beirut, people were not so certain. As plumes of smoke billowed into the sky above the partly collapsed block of flats, anxious neighbours scrambled to leave the neighbourhood, fearful of further Israeli strikes.
“This area is not safe any more, I expect there to be more. We might go to the mountains, it will be better for us,” Mira Slim, a 20-year-old university student living near the site of the airstrike, said through tears.
Queues also formed at petrol stations across the city as people filled up their cars, wary of further escalation.
Israel assassinated a top Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, with an airstrike on Beirut in January. Before that, Israeli forces had last targeted the city during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.
The Lebanese foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, denounced the strike on Beirut and said that he would file a complaint with the United Nations. “We hope that Hezbollah’s response will be consistent so that there will be no adverse Israeli response,” Bou Habib told the Lebanese media outlet LBC.
Russia swiftly condemned the attack as a violation of international law. Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer, condemned it as “sinful and cowardly aggression”.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu , had vowed a “harsh” response for the attack in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. A military statement described it as a direct response.
“The IDF carried out a targeted strike in Beirut, on the commander responsible for the murder of the children in Majdal Shams and the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians,” the Israeli military said.
In their choice of target, however, Israel may have aimed to send a broader message to Hezbollah that it could reach the group’s leadership in its strongholds.
Shukur is a member of the Jihad council, the group’s top military body. He is said to be in his early 60s and from Baalbek in eastern Lebanon.
He has been involved in Hezbollah campaigns that spanning the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Hezbollah’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in the 2010s and the tit-for-tat strikes with Israel of the past 10 months.
“This is a serious strike and it does pose a real dilemma for Hezbollah and there’s a real question now about what they do,” said Michael Hanna, the US programme director at Crisis Group.
“And then, of course, you are in the potential escalatory cycle, and headed down a path that ends up being not manageable, despite the broader aversion on both sides to all-out war.”
Earlier on Tuesday, countries including the UK, Germany, France and America had urged citizens to leave Lebanon or avoid travelling there. The British foreign secretary, David Lammy , said on Tuesday morning that events were “fast-moving” and that British nationals were advised “to leave Lebanon and not to travel to the country”.
Many airlines had cancelled flights to Beirut. Greece’s Aegean Airlines and Germany’s Condor were the latest to suspend services, joining others including Royal Jordanian, Air France and Lufthansa.
Additional reporting from Andrew Roth in Washington DC and Michael Safi
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