Who is Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah commander targeted by Israel? | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Israel attacks Hezbollah's top commander in an airstrike on a Beirut suburb, killing 12 people and wounding 66.

Israel has attacked a residential area in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut in an assassination attempt on high-ranking Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil.

The Israeli military said it had “eliminated” Aqil on Friday, but Hezbollah has not yet confirmed his killing.

Twelve people were killed and 66 others injured in the attack, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a preliminary count.

Aqil, a senior leader in Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, on whose head the U.S. State Department has offered a $7 million reward, was reportedly in a joint meeting between Hezbollah and an unnamed Palestinian group when the Israeli attack razed at least two buildings.

Witness footage showed piles of gray rubble where a building once stood and thick dust falling onto the street and covering parked cars as Lebanese civil defense forces dug in search of survivors.

The attack was another blow to Hezbollah after the group fell victim to an unprecedented attack earlier this week in which the pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and injuring thousands.

It was the second time in two months that Israel had attacked a senior Hezbollah military commander in Beirut. In July, Fuad Shukr, the group's top military commander, was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The killing of Aqil, the deputy commander of Hezbollah's forces, would be another major blow to the group.

According to U.S. authorities, Aqil, also known as Tahsin, served on Hezbollah's highest military body. He was wanted in the U.S. in connection with his role in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks, which killed 241 U.S. soldiers.

The attacks were claimed by the Islamic Jihad organization, a Hezbollah cell of which Aqil was a high-ranking member.

According to US authorities, Aqil was also responsible for the capture of American and German prisoners in the 1980s.

The Radwan Force is at the forefront of Hezbollah's cross-border fighting with Israel.

Aqil was injured in the pager explosions on Tuesday and was released from hospital on Friday morning, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.