Israeli strike on Beirut kills Hezbollah media head, security sources say

BEIRUT (Reuters) -An Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated district of Beirut on Sunday killed Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.

The Israeli military declined to comment in response to questions from Reuters. There was no evacuation order for the area published on the Israeli military spokesperson’s account on social media platform X before the strike.

The strike hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood where many people displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs by the Israeli bombardment had been seeking refuge.

The security sources said it struck a building where the offices of the Ba’ath Party are located, and the head of the party in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif was in the building.

The broadcaster later also said Afif had been killed. It showed footage of a building whose upper floors had collapsed onto the first storey, with civil defence workers at the scene.

Afif was a long-time media advisor to Hezbollah’s former secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sept. 27.

He managed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the Iran-backed group’s media relations office.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire for more than a year, since Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israeli military targets on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas carried out a deadly attack on southern Israel.

In late September, Israel dramatically escalated and expanded its military campaign in Lebanon, heavily bombing the country’s south, east and the southern suburbs of Beirut alongside ground incursions along the border.

Afif hosted several press conferences for journalists amid the rubble in the southern suburbs of the capital. In his most recent comments to reporters on Nov. 11, he said Israeli troops had been unable to occupy any territory in Lebanon and Hezbollah had enough weapons and supplies to fight a “long war”.

The Lebanese health ministry said the strike killed one and injured three.

Ambulances could be heard rushing to the scene, and bursts of gunfire rang out to prevent crowds of people from approaching the location.

(Reporting by Beirut bureau; additional reporting by Menna Alaa El Din and Emily Rose; Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Jan Harvey and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)