Beirut schools closed after deadly airstrikes 

 

A woman weeps as she passes in front of destroyed shops that were hit Sunday evening in an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Nov. 18, 2024.

Beirut schools were closed Monday after six people — including the media relations chief for Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon — were killed in airstrikes in the central part of the city a day earlier.

The strikes prompted the education ministry to shut schools and higher education institutions in the Beirut area for two days.

Hezbollah spokesperson Mohammad Afif was among four people killed in the Ras al-Nabaa district, Hezbollah and the Israeli military said.

Israel has rarely hit senior Hezbollah personnel who do not have clear military roles, and its air strikes have mostly targeted Beirut\’s southern suburbs where the group has its heaviest presence, Reuters reported.

Israel Defense Forces issued a statement about the “precise, intelligence-based strike” that killed Afif.

“Since the beginning of the war, Afif wielded significant influence over Hezbollah\’s military operations. He was in contact with senior officials and directly involved in advancing and executing Hezbollah’s terrorist activities against Israel,” IDF said. “Moreover, Afif directed Hezbollah operatives to gather footage from the field, to be used for Hezbollah\’s propaganda and psychological terror.”

Smoke rises between buildings hit in a Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 17, 2024.

A second strike in central Beirut killed two people and wounded 22 in Mar Elias.

"Israeli warplanes launched a strike on the Mar Elias area," the official National News Agency said of the densely packed district that also houses people displaced by the conflict.

Eleven other people were killed in southern Lebanon Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported.

Deaths in Gaza

An Israeli strike in a tent sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Khan Younis killed two children and their parents overnight, Palestinian officials said Monday.

The dead children were aged 7 and 9, and a 10-year-old child was also wounded, Civil Defense officials said.

On Sunday, Gaza\’s civil defense agency said 34 people were killed, including children, and dozens were missing after an Israeli air strike hit a five-story residential building in Beit Lahia.

"The chances of rescuing more wounded are decreasing because of the continuous shooting and artillery shelling," civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Palestinians react in front of the bodies people killed in an Israeli strike, at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Nov. 17, 2024.

The war in Gaza began with the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, during which the militants killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. Hamas is still holding about 100 hostages, with a third of them believed to be dead.

Israel’s counteroffensive has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, with women and children more than half the verified total, according to the Gaza health ministry.

After months of rocket fire and airstrikes between Hezbollah and Israel, the fighting expanded in Lebanon mid-September. More than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed, most of them in the past six weeks.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.

Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.

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