Beirut/Tel Aviv, Sept 21,. (dpa/GNA) – The death toll from Friday’s Israeli attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a hotbed of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement, rose to 37, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Among the dead were three children and seven women, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said in a press conference. At least 68 people were injured in the strike, the minister said.
Hezbollah has reported the deaths of 15 of its members so far, following the Israeli attack, including high-ranking military official Ibrahim Aqil and other commanders. Aqil was one of the founding members of Hezbollah, and the group’s elite Radwan Force.
A spokesman for the Israeli army on Saturday put the number of Hezbollah members killed in the strike at 16.
However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said apart from Aqil, a man named Abu Hassan Samir, who was said to be the head of the training unit of the Radwan force, a Hezbollah elite unit, was killed during Friday’s attack and other Radwan commanders from this unit were also killed.
The IDF, in a post on Telegram, said Samir was “one of the planners and leaders” of the so-called “Conquer the Galilee” plan, which the IDF says planned to raid Israeli communities of the northern Galilee region. This could not be independently confirmed.
Apart from that, the IDF said it has destroyed thousands of rocket launchers and 180 targets in “a number of strikes” in southern Lebanon.
In a mid-afternoon post on Telegram, it said the air force had hit thousands of the launcher barrels in the past hour “that were ready for immediate use to fire toward Israeli territory.”
It said it would continue operating to “dismantle and degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and terror infrastructure.”
The army reported about 90 incoming projectile launches, into northern Israel from Lebanon in the past day.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday accused Israel of planning to spread its war in the Gaza Strip to the wider region.
“Attacks on Lebanon in recent days have proven our concerns about the Israeli administration’s plans to spread war to the region,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul ahead of his departure for New York to attend the UN General Assembly.
The region faces a “huge crisis,” the Turkish president said, further accusing Israel of “carrying out attacks like a terrorist group,” referring to the recent explosions of pagers used by Hezbollah in Lebanon which have been widely attributed to Israel.
Israel’s attacks on Lebanon are a “provocation” in order to implement a “radical Zionist ideology,” Erdogan charged.
Erdogan’s government has close ties to Palestinian extremist group Hamas, which is allied with Hezbollah.
Iran, considered Hezbollah’s main backer, strongly condemned the targeted killing of Aqil. However, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran, an ally of Hezbollah, is not planning a direct act of revenge.
“The incident is a matter for Hezbollah, and it will certainly show an appropriate reaction in due course,” the Iranian chief diplomat said, according to a report published by Iran’s ISNA news agency on Saturday.
Araghchi called Friday’s targeted killing of Hezbollah commander Aqil “a criminal act of desperation by the Zionist regime.”
He said that Israel had reached an impasse, and was now trying “to drag the entire region into the swamp with such crimes.”
Iran would push for international condemnation of Israeli “war crimes” to prevent an even more dangerous escalation of the situation in the Middle East, the minister said.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Israel has been Iran’s declared archenemy.
In Berlin, German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said Germany is concerned that if the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah spreads over the Middle East, the ensuing destruction would be “catastrophic.”
“The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah must not become a regional conflagration,” he said.
“This would have terrible and long-term consequences for people throughout the region. The destruction from such a confrontation would be catastrophic.”
Meanwhile, the number of fatalities from the coordinated blasts involving electronic devices in Lebanon earlier this week, has risen from 37 to 39, the Health Ministry said.
Some 3,000 people were injured in the detonations, which have also been widely attributed to Israel.
In a separate incident, one person was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon, the authorities reported on Saturday.
The strike targeted the town of Hamul, not far from the border with Israel, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The victim was a Syrian citizen, it said.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the report. It was initially unclear whether the victim was a member of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.
GNA