Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon kill 8 Hezbollah members, 2 others: officials
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An Israeli airstrike in eastern Lebanon killed eight members of the terrorist group Hezbollah, including several local officials, two of the group’s officials said on Saturday.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health put the death toll at 10 but did not distinguish between soldiers and civilians.
Hezbollah officials told The Associated Press that eight soldiers were killed in strikes near the village of Rayak, in northeastern Lebanon, on Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media with such details.
An Associated Press team that visited the site of the strike on Saturday morning saw that the top floor of the three-story building had collapsed.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that several members of Hezbollah’s missile unit, at three separate control centers in the Baalbek area of Lebanon, had been “eliminated.” The force added that the slain Hezbollah members were identified as “working to accelerate readiness and force-building processes, while planning fire attacks on Israel.”
One of the Hezbollah officials said three of the dead were local officials and identified them as Ali al-Moussawi, Mohammed al-Moussawi and Hussein Yaghi.
Yaghi was the son of a prominent Hezbollah official and one of its founders, Mohammed Yaghi, who died in 2023. Mohammed Yaghi was also a close aide to late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September 2024.
The Ministry of Health in Lebanon said that more than 10 people were killed in the Israeli strikes, 24 were injured, including three children.
Ali Abdullah, executive director of Rayak Hospital, told AP that the strike happened after sunset, adding that they found 10 bodies and 21 wounded. The dead included two non-Lebanese nationals – a Syrian man and an Ethiopian woman, he said. The wounded included five Syrians and three Ethiopians.
Ethiopians often come to Lebanon as migrant domestic workers.
The funeral was held on Saturday afternoon in the eastern village of Nabi Sheet for several members of Hezbollah who were killed in these strikes.
After 7 October 2023, Israel’s attack led by Hamas started the war in Gaza, Hezbollah started firing rockets from Lebanon into Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.
Israel responded with airstrikes and bombings. The low-level conflict escalated into a full-scale war in September 2024, later intensifying but not fully halted by a US-brokered ceasefire agreement two months later.
Since then, Israel has accused Hezbollah of trying to rebuild and has carried out almost daily strikes on Lebanon that it says targets Hezbollah terrorists and facilities. Hezbollah has sought one strike against Israel since the ceasefire.
The death toll from Friday’s strikes was unusually high and comes at a time of heightened tensions in the region as the United States threatens to strike Iran – which backs Hezbollah and Hamas – if talks on Tehran’s nuclear program fail to produce a deal.
