Israel says the attack hits the intelligence unit of Iran-backed Hezbollah, while Lebanon puts the death toll at over 2,000 in two weeks

A heavy round of new things Israeli airstrikes Overnight, Israeli military bombed buildings in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital say Friday that there was another headquarters that had attacked Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. The attack came hours before Iran announced that its foreign minister had arrived in Beirut – the first visit by a senior Iranian official to Lebanon since the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's longtime leader, and Iran's Oct. 1 missile strike Israel has vowed retaliation.

Lebanese media suggested the target may have been a senior Hezbollah figure seen as a potential successor to Nasrallah murdered in a similar Israeli attack in Beirut exactly a week ago.

NOTE: This article contains an image of a dead child that may be disturbing to some readers.

The Reuters news agency quoted the Lebanese Health Ministry as saying that at least 37 people were killed and 151 others injured by Israeli attacks in the country in the past 24 hours.

Five days of Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon, near Israel's northern border, and two weeks of air strikes in that region and southern Beirut – both Hezbollah strongholds – have killed more than 2,000 people, the health ministry said. More than a million people have been forced from their homes, including tens of thousands in nearly 100 towns and villages near the border due to Israeli evacuation orders.

The explosions in Beirut's southern suburbs sent huge fireballs and clouds of smoke billowing over the city overnight. Lebanon's state news agency reported that at least 10 consecutive attacks on buildings had taken place in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had attacked “Hezbollah's central intelligence headquarters,” but the country's army radio station said the IDF was still working to determine whether senior members of the group had been killed in the attacks.

Israel stepped up its attack on Hezbollah — long designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel and many other nations — two weeks ago, pledging to push the group's well-entrenched fighters and weapons back far enough from the border to face a near-daily attack Attack to halt the hail of rockets and drones on Israel.

Hezbollah began these attacks in support of its ideological ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, the day after Hamas launched the push War in Gaza with the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. According to the IDF, Hezbollah fighters have fired over 10,000 rockets across the border since October 8, 2023. The vast majority of these were intercepted by Israel's advanced missile defense systems.

Among those killed in Lebanon this week was American Kamal Ahmed Jawad of Dearborn, Michigan. His family said he was a volunteer who was killed in an airstrike in southern Lebanon.

The White House said in a statement it was “deeply saddened” by Jawad's death.

The U.S. government has warned Americans against traveling to Lebanon since mid-September and urged all citizens in the country to leave the country via commercial routes. The government has helped arrange seats on flights from Lebanon for American citizens, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said earlier this week, while other nations are booking charter flights and making plans for possible evacuations.

Another Israeli airstrike has cut off a main road between Lebanon and neighboring Syria, Lebanese state media said on Friday. Tens of thousands of people have fled fighting in Syria since Israel expanded its military operations in Lebanon.

The Israeli military admitted to carrying out an attack on the area on Thursday to destroy a cross-border tunnel allegedly used by Hezbollah to transport and store “large quantities of weapons underground,” in addition to other “terrorist infrastructure” nearby. According to the Associated Press, Hezbollah is believed to have obtained many of its weapons from Iran via Syria.

Lebanese officials said most of the roughly half-dozen border crossings between Lebanon and Syria remained open.

The rapidly increasing number of victims is bringing Lebanon's already weak health system to the brink of collapse. According to the Lebanese Health Minister, at least 40 medics and firefighters have been killed in Israeli attacks in the last three days alone. They include about half a dozen medics killed in an attack late Wednesday night at a central Beirut office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated with Hezbollah.

The rapidly escalating violence in Lebanon comes weeks after Israel announced a deliberate shift in its military focus to the northern front, but the IDF has also continued operations in the Palestinian territories.

An IDF airstrike overnight in Tulkarem, in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, killed 18 people, Palestinian officials said. Israel has carried out a number of significant raids in the West Bank over the past year, including in Tulkarem, usually targeting Hamas fighters or commanders.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that between October 7, 2023 and the end of September 2024, at least 678 Palestinians were killed by Israeli military operations in the West Bank, while twelve others were killed killed by Israeli settlers.

President Biden has supported Israel's right to respond “proportionately” to Iran's latest missile attack, but also said more must be done to prevent the close ally's battle with Iran's so-called proxy groups from becoming a larger one War in the Middle East expands. However, despite repeated US calls for ceasefires, neither Israel nor Hezbollah nor Hamas have so far shown any intention of giving in.