Death toll from Israeli strike on Hezbollah military leaders rises

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BEIRUT—Israel’s airstrike on a building in southern Beirut didn’t just kill a top Hezbollah commander—it took out an entire class of senior leaders of the militant group’s most elite fighting force, as the two foes lurch closer to all-out war. Hezbollah on Saturday raised the death toll among its fighters from Friday’s airstrike to 16, including top military commander Ibrahim Aqil and many of the senior commanders of the elite Radwan force.

The strike on top leadership followed a pair of broad attacks on the group’s rank and file, when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that had been rigged with explosives blew up roughly simultaneously across the country. According to the group’s own death announcements, the week’s attacks accounted for about 10% of the 500 Hezbollah fighters to have been killed since the group started firing rockets across the border shortly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, said Israel’s string of attacks is aimed at killing the militants who underpin Hezbollah’s ability to fight a war. “They’re looking to take out people who matter," he said. “So this is calculated." The week has taken an enormous toll.

Lebanon’s minister of health said Saturday that doctors had performed more than 2,000 surgeries on people injured in the attacks, primarily from the pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah members. Friday’s airstrike left 31 dead, including women and children, he said. The total includes the fighters.