The strike threatens a truce both Israel and Hezbollah have accused each other of violating.
An Israeli airstrike killed four people in Beirut early Tuesday, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, rocking an already shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
The operation marks the latest threat to a fragile four-month truce during which both Israel and Hezbollah have accused each other of violating its terms, and came the day after United Nations officials demanded “answers and justice” over the discovery of the bodies of 15 aid workers found in a mass grave in the Gaza Strip.
In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet — Israel’s internal security agency — and its Mossad intelligence agency, said the strike on the southern Beirut suburb and Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh had killed Hassan Ali Badir, who they said was a Hezbollah militant and member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who had recently assisted Hamas.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told a press briefing Tuesday that Badir was a “ticking bomb” for an attack in the immediate future, adding that Israel expected the Lebanese government to act against any terrorists operating within its territory.
While Hezbollah did not confirm whether Badir had been killed, Ibrahim Al-Moussawi, one of the group’s members of Lebanon’s Parliament, condemned the operation that left seven people injured and said it violated international laws.
“What happened was a major aggression that took the situation to a completely new phase,” Al-Moussawi told NBC News. “We hold the international community and the United States responsible for this crime.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun also criticized the bombardment, saying in a post on X on Tuesday that Israel’s growing aggression in Lebanon had prompted the country to seek support from its international allies.
Israel did not issue any evacuation warnings for the area ahead of the strike, while the State Department said in a statement Tuesday that hostilities had resumed “because terrorists launched rockets into Israel from Lebanon,” Reuters reported.
Israel and Hezbollah’s yearlong conflict was paused in November by a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, which required both Israeli troops and the Iran-backed militant group to vacate southern Lebanon while Lebanese troops were deployed to the area.
Both sides have accused each other of violating those terms after Israel delayed its withdrawal in January and said it had intercepted rockets fired from Lebanon in March, for which Hezbollah denies responsibility.
The current conflict between Israel and Lebanon erupted after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas, following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Since then, Israel’s ongoing military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 50,000 people, including thousands of children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the enclave run by the militant group.
The ministry said Tuesday that Israeli forces had killed 42 people in the past 24 hours, with many victims still trapped under rubble.
That figure has continued to climb since Israel’s military shattered a two-month-old ceasefire last month, with its assault on the enclave having since intensified with the stated aim of eliminating Hamas to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attacks.
On Monday, U.N. officials demanded “answers and justice” from Israel after the bodies of 15 aid workers were found buried in a mass grave in the southern Gaza Strip.
The humanitarian workers, who worked for the Red Crescent, Palestinian Civil Defense and the U.N., had been killed and buried in the sand near “wrecked & well-marked vehicles” while trying to save lives, U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher said in a post on X on Monday.
The bodies included eight of the nine aid workers who had gone missing when tending to the injured in Rafah on March 23, with one worker still unaccounted for, the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement Monday.
They added that the bodies of six civil defense members and one U.N. employee had also been recovered.
Israel’s military has not yet commented on why the bodies were buried beneath the sand or why the vehicles were found crushed.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian Refugees, said the discarded bodies had amounted to “a profound violation of human dignity” in a post on X om Monday.
The incident has brought the death toll of aid workers in Gaza to 408, he added.
