Middle East updates: Israeli military strikes Beirut suburb

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the UN's Security Council that Israel could continue carrying out attacks on the Hezbollah militant group in southern Lebanon.

"We will not allow Hezbollah to continue its provocations. The actions violate international law and Israel will defend itself," Danon said.

"If Hezbollah does not retreat from our border and back to the north of the Litani River through diplomatic efforts, Israel will be left with no choice but to use any means within our rights to defend our citizens and enable the evacuees of the North to return to their homes."

Danon said that Hezbollah had fired 8,000 rockets at Israel since October 7, when Hamas launched its deadly attacks on Israel, which led to Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Since the start of the conflict, there have been almost daily confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah across the Israel-Lebanon border.

Danon accused Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib of not mentioning Hezbollah in his address to the Security Council during the same session. He said that the Lebanese state had failed to reign in the militant group.

"You have allowed a terrorist organization to create a state ... within your state bringing ruin to your own people. Instead of blaming us, your peaceful neighbors, you should take action now to restrain Hezbollah," Danon said.

"We know that the real problem is not Lebanon. The real problem is Hezbollah," Danon said, while offering to "sit with [you and] help achieve some kind of a compromise."

Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom and others, while the European Union has designated its military wing as a terror group.

The group de facto controls parts of Lebanon's predominantly Shiite Muslim south and east and its political wing is one of the parties in the country's coalition government.

Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib condemned the detonation of communications devices in his country this week as a "an unprecedented method of warfare in its brutality and terror."

Bou Habib made the comment during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday. During the meeting, he held up a photo of a bloody hand with its fingers blown off and said the incident shows "no one in this world is safe anymore."

The Lebanese foreign minister accused Israel of being behind the incident. Israel has not commented on the explosions.

Bou Habib continued: "We came to the council to protect our common humanity and to ask you to condemn the terrorist Israeli attacks clearly and unequivocally, to hold Israel accountable for planning and implementing these attacks and for violating the sovereignty of Lebanon and its territorial integrity."

Hezbollah has confirmed that commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese capital Beirut earlier on Friday.

In a statement, the group described Aqil as "one of its great leaders."

Israel's military said that it killed Aqil and 10 other senior Hezbollah members in the strike.

Lebanon's Health Ministry said at least 14 people died in the strike and dozens more were wounded.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk has called for an independent, thorough and transparent investigation into the detonation of pagers and other communications devices in Lebanon this week.

"International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-trap devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects," Türk told the Security Council late on Friday.

He said it is "difficult to conceive how, in these circumstances, such attacks could possibly conform with the key principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack, under international humanitarian law."  

Türk also said it "is a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians" and called for those responsible to be held accountable.

About 10 senior Hezbollah members were killed along with Ibrahim Aqil, leader of the movement's Radwan unit, in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, Israel's military spokesperson said.

"This elimination is intended to protect the citizens of Israel," he said in a brief statement to the press, adding that Israel was not seeking regional escalation.

Reuters news agency said the attack occurred during a meeting of Aqil and the other Radwan unit members. There has been no confirmation of Aqil's death from Hezbollah.

Aqil, who had a $7 million US bounty on his head over his link to the deadly bombing of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, was only discharged from hospital on Friday after being injured in an attack on Hezbollah's electronic devices widely attributed to Israel, the dpa news agency reported.

Lebanese health officials said 12 people died in the attack and 60 more were injured in the Israeli attack, adding that the number could increase as rescue personnel continue sorting through rubble in the southern suburb of Beirut.

The US government has said a war could be averted between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia despite recent mutual attacks.

Asked about the impact of fighting elsewhere in the region, US President Joe Biden also said: "We have to make sure that the people of northern Israel as well as southern Lebanon are able to get back to their homes, and get back safely."

Following a barrage of over 100 Hezbollah rockets at northern Israel and an Israeli strike in a suburb of Beirut, US national security adviser John Kirby said the United States would "continue to do everything we can" to prevent an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah.

"We still believe that there is time and space for a diplomatic solution. We think that is the best way forward," Kirby said, adding that a war on the Israel-Lebanon border was "not inevitable."

News agencies including AFP and Reuters, as well as several Israeli media outlets, cite anonymous sources as saying that a senior commander in Hezbollah's Radwan unit, Ibrahim Aqil, was killed in the strike in Beirut. 

"The Israeli airstrike killed Radwan Force commander Ibrahim Aqil, its armed forces' second-in-command after Fouad Shukur," AFP  reported, citing a source close to Hezbollah, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, as saying.

The Israeli military later said Aqil was killed in the attack. Hezbollah has not confirmed reports of Aqil's death. 

Shukur was killed in southern Beirut in July of this year, a matter of hours before Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's killing in Tehran in Iran. 

Earlier reports from both Lebanon and Israel had said that Aqil was the target of the Israeli attack.

Lebanon's Health Ministry issued an updated casualty count soon after an Israeli attack struck a southern Beirut suburb. 

"The Israeli enemy strike on Beirut's southern suburb killed eight people," leaving "59 injured, including eight in critical condition," the ministry said in a statement. 

It had initially reported three dead and 17 wounded, but the Civil Defense Department had said rescuers were searching the rubble after a pair of residential buildings collapsed.

Hezbollah said in a statement, soon after the explosions in southern Beirut, that it had fired Katyusha rockets at Israel's main intelligence headquarters for the northern region. 

The militant group said this facility "is responsible" for the "assassinations," without specifying whether it was referring to the attack in Beirut, the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah this week, or both.

Katyusha rocket launchers are a Soviet-era form of rocket artillery in use since World War II. They are only effective over fairly short distances, with a range of usually less than 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles). 

Lebanon's Health Ministry gave an initial toll of three dead and 17 wounded following the explosions in southern Beirut. 

Witnesses told Lebanese media that ambulances arrived at a building in a southern suburb that was hit by at least two rockets. Smoke could be seen rising from the scene as authorities closed off nearby roads.

Lebanese media, including Al-Mayadeen TV and Al-Manar, reported that a drone fired several missiles on the southern suburb of Dahiyeh.

The strike came after Hezbollah fired around 140 rockets at targets in northern Israel earlier on Friday (see entry below). 

Israel Army Radio cited an unnamed security source as saying that the target of the strike was Hezbollah's operations commander Ibrahim Aqil. 

While aerial attacks on parts of southern Lebanon near the border are common, Israeli strikes in Beirut are comparatively rare. 

Two had so far been documented this year, both against high-profile targets. An Israeli airstrike in July killed Hezbollah's military chief Fouad Shukur.

In January, Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an airstrike, although Israel did not formally claim responsibility in that case. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a brief statement on Friday that it had carried out what it called a "targeted strike" in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, without providing further information. 

"The IDF conducted a targeted strike in Beirut," it said on social media in English. 

In its Hebrew-language post, the IDF also said "at this moment, there are no changes in the Home Front Command defensive guidelines," referring to guidance to people on how to react during air raid alerts and in other similar emergencies.

Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV reported that a drone fired several missiles at a heavily populated area known as Dahiyeh.

Israel submitted an "official challenge" to a request from the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor for an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The State of Israel submitted today its official challenge to the ICC's jurisdiction, as well as the legality of the prosecutor's requests for arrest warrants against Israel's prime minister and minister of defense," Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said on X.

Israel's filing could further delay a decision on arrest warrants, requested in May against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan last month urged judges to rule on the warrants, sought also against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and others in the Palestinian militant group.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that its first legal brief outlined the ICC's "manifest lack of jurisdiction" in the case. The second paper, it said, argues that the ICC Prosecutor breached court rules by "failing to provide Israel with the opportunity to exercise its right to investigate by itself the claims raised by the Prosecutor, before proceeding."

Unlike the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which handles disputes between countries, the ICC tries individuals suspected of the most heinous crimes. It is the world's only independent court established to investigate the most serious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

However, it relies on its member states to execute arrest warrants and has no police force of its own.

Hezbollah fired some 140 rockets at northern Israel in retaliation for air strikes on southern Lebanon earlier, the Israeli military said, adding that the rockets came in three waves on Friday afternoon.

Hezbollah said it had targeted several sites along the border with Katyusha rockets, including several air defense bases as well as the headquarters of an Israeli armored brigade, which it said it had hit for the first time.

The militant group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed Thursday to continue daily attacks on Israel despite this week's deadly sabotage of its members' communications equipment, which he called a "severe blow." 

Simon Mabon, professor of international politics at Lancaster University in the UK, spoke to DW about the plans Israel might be pursuing after it was accused of blowing up hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon.

He said Israel's stated goal is to reintegrate members of the northern communities who were evacuated in light of the post-October 7 tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, but he also sees a number of different scenarios that could play out.

"We don't know if what we've seen over the past few days is a precursor to an all-out invasion of southern Lebanon" or whether "it is an attempt to reestablish a form of deterrence between Israel and Hezbollah," the researcher said.

Mabon called the recent sabotage of Hezbollah communication device "psychological operations... generating this real sense of paranoia as to what might happen next."

According to the researcher, the sabotage demonstrated "gray zone superiority." That is "the idea that you can conduct these types of acts that are seen to be, and I say this very carefully, seem to be under the threshold for a wider escalation, but still demonstrate military superiority."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has vowed revenge for the pager attacks, but the researcher did not see this as a call for all-out war, but rather "a very, very difficult and delicate balancing act."