24 September 2024 , 16:57
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Israel has claimed to have killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, the head of Hezbollah’s missile systems, in what it described as a targeted attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Qubaisi was killed in an airstrike carried out by Israeli fighter jets in the the Dahiyeh suburb.
Other senior officers in Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division were at the apartment where the commander was killed, the IDF said.
From the Times of Israel’s Emanuel Fabian:
The IDF confirms that Ibrahim Qubaisi, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division was killed in an airstrike in Beirut. https://t.co/PAlp5VgXZ7
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 24, 2024
Earlier Israel’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, had said “Hezbollah must not be given a break – we will speed up the offensive operations today.”
Lebanon’s health minister Firass Abiad earlier reported the death toll from the Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday had reached nearly 560, including dozens of children and women.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, with the mayor of Sidon reporting that 10,000 internally displaced people had made their way to the city, of which 6,000 were in shelters.
The death toll in Lebanon comes on top of those killed and wounded in last week’s detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies, with an official from the World Health Organization saying that some hospitals were being overwhelmed with casualties.
The IDF has claimed to have dropped nearly 2,000 weapons on 1,500 Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon in the last day. Hezbollah, for its part, has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, some of which have started fires. One person was reported to have been wounded by shrapnel, and there are unconfirmed reports of other Israeli injuries in the north of the country. Overnight Hezbollah said it had targeted Israeli military bases and an airfield.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in an interview with US network CNN that Israel is “armed to the teeth and has access to weapons systems that are far superior to anything else” and that “we must not allow for Lebanon to become another Gaza. We must prevent the ongoing criminal acts being committed by Israel.”