Hezbollah spokesman killed in Israeli airstrike in Beirut, official says

The main spokesman for Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on central Beirut on Sunday, an official with the militant group said.

The Hezbollah official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, told the Associated Press that Mohammed Afif was killed in a strike on the Arab socialist Baath party’s office.

Afif, who was the head of media relations for Hezbollah, has been especially visible after Israel’s military escalation in September and following the assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Last month, Afif had hastily wrapped up a press conference in Beirut ahead of Israeli strikes.

Israeli warplanes pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday 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 U.S.-brokered cease-fire proposal.

An Associated Press photographer at the scene of Sunday’s strike saw four bodies and four wounded people, but there was no official word on the toll. People could be seen fleeing the neighborhood. There was no comment from the Israeli military.

“I was asleep and awoke from the sound of the strike, and people screaming, and cars and gunfire,” said Suheil Halabi, who witnessed the strike. “I was startled, honestly. This is the first time I experience it so close.”

The last Israeli strike in central Beirut was on Oct. 10, when 22 people were killed in strikes on two locations.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that ignited the war in Gaza. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes in Lebanon and the conflict steadily escalated, erupting into all-out war in September. Israeli forces invaded Lebanon on Oct. 1.

Overnight strikes in central Gaza kill 12

Israeli strikes hit two built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, killing six people in Nuseirat and another four in Bureij.

Another two people were killed in a strike on Gaza’s main north-south highway, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, which received all 12 bodies.

The war between Israel and Hamas began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7. last year, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting around 250 others. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead.

The Health Ministry in Gaza says around 43,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but has said women and children make up more than half the fatalities.

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.”