Israeli air strikes on eastern Lebanon have killed eight members of the militant Hizbullah group, including local commanders, officials said.
The Lebanese health ministry put the death toll at 10, but did not distinguish between militants and civilians.
Hizbullah officials said eight militants were killed in strikes near the village of Rayak late on Friday.
The top floor of a three-storey building at the scene of the strike was destroyed, according to an Associated Press team that visited the site on Saturday morning.
The Israeli military said several members of Hizbullah’s missile unit, in three different command centres in the Baalbek area in Lebanon, were “eliminated”.
The Israeli army added that the Hizbullah members killed were identified “as operating to accelerate readiness and force build-up processes, while planning fire attacks toward Israel”.
One Hizbullah official said three of the dead were local commanders, and identified them as Ali al-Moussawi, Mohammed al-Moussawi and Hussein Yaghi.
Yaghi was the son of prominent Hizbullah member and one of its founders, Mohammed Yaghi, who died in 2023. Mohammed Yaghi was also a close aide to the group’s late leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in 2024.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes on the east of the country killed 10 people and wounded 24, including three children.
Ali Abdullah, executive director of Rayak Hospital, said the strike occurred after sunset, adding that they have received 10 bodies and 21 injured people.
He said a Syrian man and an Ethiopian woman were among those killed. The injured included five Syrians and three Ethiopians.
After the October 7th Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza in 2023, Hizbullah began firing rockets from Lebanon into Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.
Israel responded with air strikes and shelling. The low-level conflict escalated into full-scale war in September 2024, later reined in but not fully stopped by a subsequent US-brokered ceasefire.
Since then, Israel has accused Hizbullah of trying to rebuild and has carried out near-daily strikes in Lebanon that it says target Hizbullah militants and facilities. Hizbullah has claimed one strike against Israel since the ceasefire.
The death toll from Friday’s strikes was unusually high and comes at a moment of intensified tensions in the region as the US has threatened to strike Iran – a backer of both Hizbullah and Hamas – if negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programme fail to produce a deal. – AP
