Israel attacks Beirut in Lebanon: Hezbollah leader Ibrahim Aqil and commanders among the 12 dead in airstrike; 59 injured

BERUIT — A key Hezbollah commander and his chain of command were killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on Friday, according to the Israel Defense Forces, as tensions continue to rise along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah member and target of the attack in south Beirut, was killed, according to the Israeli army. Senior activists and commanders of the Raduan unit were also killed in the attack, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Aqil and the slain commanders allegedly planned to occupy Galilee, a move Israel said would have been similar to Hamas's October 7 attack, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement.

Aqil, also known as Tahsin, served on Hezbollah's highest military body and was a leading member of the Islamic Jihad organization, which, according to the U.S. State Department, claimed responsibility for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people.

In 2023, the US is offering a reward of up to $7 million for any information leading to the “identification, location, arrest and/or conviction of Hezbollah leader Ibrahim Aqil,” according to the US Award for Justice program. Aqil also led the hostage-taking of American and German individuals in Lebanon and held them there in the 1980s.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, at least 12 people were killed and 59 others injured in the Israeli attack in southern Beirut.

According to the Lebanese Civil Defense, search and rescue operations are underway after Israel struck two residential buildings in the Jamous neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hagari said Israel would “continue to work to undermine the country's capabilities and inflict damage.”

By Friday afternoon, about 120 rockets had been fired from Lebanon toward Israel, the Israel Defense Forces told ABC News. A day earlier, Israel had attacked more than 100 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, according to military sources.

The Israel Defense Forces also said in a statement that they attacked a terrorist in Kfarkela on Friday, but did not say who the target was or whether the person was killed. A statement said: “Earlier today, Israel Defense Forces soldiers identified a Hezbollah terrorist who entered a terrorist infrastructure facility used by Hezbollah in the Kfarkela area of ​​southern Lebanon. Immediately afterward, the Israeli Air Force attacked the facility from which the terrorist was operating.”

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The targeted attack in Beirut was a response to numerous rockets fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel on Friday. Israeli forces said they also attacked Hezbollah targets in several other cities in southern Lebanon.

An Israeli official told ABC News that Israel's emergency services had raised their national alert to Level 4 – the highest level defined as maximum readiness for all-out war.

Representatives of the United States and other international leaders called on Hezbollah and Israel to seek diplomatic ways to de-escalate the conflict.

US officials urged their Israeli counterparts in confidential talks this week to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Thursday, adding that the US is committed to defending Israel from all terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies.

“We will continue to support Israel's right to self-defense,” Miller said during a press conference on Thursday. “But we do not want either party to escalate this conflict, period.”

Miller and other U.S. officials joined a chorus of international officials who also called on Israel and Hezbollah to withdraw from a conflict that threatens to expand and increase in intensity. Israel and Hezbollah have fired a volley of missiles across the border almost daily for the past 11 months.

Those attacks appeared to take on new urgency on Thursday when Israel launched a series of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. The attacks were among the largest in nearly a year and followed an attack using explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and Syria, a deadly surprise attack behind which Israel was behind, a source said.

A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon told Reuters on Friday that the agency was also calling for de-escalation after this week's “massive escalation of hostilities beyond the Blue Line,” the border between Israel and Lebanon.

European heads of state and government made similar appeals on Thursday. Both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for de-escalation in the Middle East in separate public statements.

Macron posted a message to the Lebanese people on social media, written in French, in which he stated that the Lebanese people cannot live in fear of impending war and that conflict must be avoided.

Lammy said he met with his American, French, German and Italian counterparts on Thursday and all four agreed that “we want to see a negotiated political solution” between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group.

“It is very clear to all of us that we want a negotiated political solution so that the Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel and the Lebanese can also return to their homes,” Lammy told reporters on Thursday.

He added: “And that is why I am calling tonight for an immediate ceasefire from both sides so that we can come to that agreement, that political agreement that is needed.

ABC News' Jordana Miller, Dana Savir and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.