Hezbollah confirmed the death of one of its senior commanders, Fuad Shukr, in an Israeli airstrike, an attack that killed five other , including children.
The location of Tuesday’s strike — less than three miles from central Beirut — and its timing, as tensions between Israel and Hezbollah are spiking, led to fears of more escalation and worry that Lebanon would be plunged into war. Israeli officials suggested that their killing of Shukr amounted to closing a circle: their answer to the soccer field attack.
But Hezbollah gave no such assurances. In its statement Wednesday, the group said leader Hasan Nasrallah would outline Hezbollah’s “political stance on this sinful attack and major crime” in a speech Thursday during Shukr’s funeral.
The Israeli strike killed at least five other , including three women and two children — Hasan Fadallah, 10, and his sister Amira, 6, their aunt said — making it one of the deadliest single strikes for civilians in Lebanon during 10 months of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. At least 80 were injured, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
In a speech this month, Nasrallah vowed to retaliate for the killings of civilians by striking new areas in Israel.
During an emergency cabinet session Wednesday, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the Israeli strike on Shukr as well as the killing, hours later in Iran, of Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader.
“We wonder at the reason behind this escalation,” Mikati said in a statement carried by Lebanon’s state news agency. “We fear the situation will worsen if the countries concerned and the entire international community do not rush to curb this dangerous disorder.”
In Haret Hreik, an area where Hezbollah enjoys significant support, security was stepped up Wednesday as the rescue workers searched the detritus of the eight-story building that was hit, causing several floors to buckle. The area, which is predominantly Shiite Muslim but also has Christian residents, was rebuilt by Hezbollah, with funds from Iran, after the last major war between the group and Israel, in 2006.
A few blocks away from the destroyed building Wednesday, hundreds attended a funeral for the Fadallah children, who were to be buried in a cemetery normally reserved for Hezbollah fighters.
The children’s aunt, Zainab Sultani, said Israel and the United States were “responsible for what happened.” She had learned that the children were in peril from the family WhatsApp group, when her sister asked for help digging them out of the rubble. The children’s father, Mohamad, and their elder brother, Ali, were still hospitalized.
When the elder brother and her own son grow up, she said, they “will join the resistance and take revenge” for the siblings.
Fears of a wider war echoed in the neighborhood. Mariam Hasan, 48, an emergency room doctor at the local Sahel Hospital, said the staff was continually preparing for mass-casualty events. “Every six months we carry out training maneuvers to be prepared for natural disasters and terrorist attacks and wars,” she said
The night of the attack on Shukr, she was headed home but turned back to the hospital once she heard the blast. “Our hospital is ready for a war,” she said, but she added that she wanted a different future. “We have enough disease, poverty and misery; we do not need wars.”
Mohamad Ezzedine, a retired banker who lives next to the building where Shukr was killed, said his windows were shattered in the blast, but he had been through worse. His previous house was destroyed during the 2006 war. Now he worried what was to come.
“Everything is possible,” he said.
On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel that included the taking of civilian hostages at a music festival. See photos and videos of how the deadly assault unfolded. Israel declared war on Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948. In July 2024, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack Hamas has blamed on Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars, killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the population into “famine-like conditions.” For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave.
Despite tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some U.S. politicians, including President Biden, the United States supports Israel with weapons, funds aid packages, and has vetoed or abstained from the United Nations’ cease-fire resolutions.
The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mistrust are deep and complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Read more on the history of the Gaza Strip.
