Sunday, 22 December 2024
Sunday, 22 December 2024
The main spokesman for Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group was killed in the first Israeli airstrike on central Beirut in more than a month on Sunday, an official with the militant group told The Associated Press.
Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip had earlier killed 12 people, Palestinian medical officials said.
The Hezbollah official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, said Mohammed Afif was killed in the strike in central Beirut.
Afif had been especially visible after Israel's military escalation in September and following the assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was also killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Israeli warplanes had earlier pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut after the military warned people to evacuate from several buildings. The Hezbollah militant group has a strong presence in the area, known as the Dahiyeh, and the strikes came as Lebanese officials are considering a US-brokered cease-fire proposal.
Also on Sunday, Israeli police said they arrested three suspects after flares were fired at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's private residence in the coastal city of Caesarea.
Netanyahu and his family were not at the residence when two flares were fired at it overnight, and there were no injuries, authorities said. A drone launched by Hezbollah struck the residence last month, also when Netanyahu and his family were away.
The police did not provide details about the suspects behind the flares, but officials pointed to domestic political critics of Netanyahu. Israel's largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the incident and warned against “an escalation of the violence in the public sphere”.
Netanyahu has faced months of mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis unleashed by Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack into Israel, which ignited the ongoing war in Gaza.
Critics blame Netanyahu for the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to happen and for not reaching a deal with Hamas to release scores of hostages still held inside Gaza. Israelis rallied again in the city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand a cease-fire deal to return them.
