According to a statement made on Saturday by Lebanon’s health minister, 31 people have died as a result of Friday’s Israeli bombing on a suburb of Beirut, which include three children and seven women.
Reporters were informed by Firass Abiad that 68 individuals were injured in the deadliest Israeli airstrike on Beirut since the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, of which 15 are still hospitalized.
The dead toll included Ibrahim Akil, a Hezbollah commander who was in charge of the group’s elite Radwan Forces, as well as roughly a dozen members of the militant group who were gathering in the basement of the building that was destroyed.
Friday afternoon, at rush hour, Israel carried out the unusual airstrike in the heavily populated southern Beirut area as people were making their way home from work and students from schools. On Saturday morning, Hezbollah’s media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the airstrike where workers were still digging through the rubble.
Members of the Lebanese Red Cross were stationed nearby to collect any bodies that were retrieved from under the debris, and Lebanese troops had cordoned off the area to prevent civilians from accessing the destroyed structure.
After Hezbollah launched one of its most powerful bombardments of northern Israel in almost a year of fighting, primarily targeting Israeli military positions, Friday’s tragic hit occurred just hours later. The majority of the Katyusha rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
(AP)
