BEIRUT—The Israeli military targeted one of Hezbollah’s top military leaders in a strike in Beirut intended as retaliation for a Saturday attack on the Israel-controlled Golan Heights that killed 12 young people, a response that came amid fears of a widening war in the Middle East.
The strike produced a loud explosion in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency. The sound of sirens wailing could be heard miles from the blast.
The Israeli strike comes at a dangerous moment in Israel’s nine-month conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, following that group’s Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. During the conflict, Israel and Hezbollah have regularly exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, though the strike on Tuesday was the second time during the war that Israel has targeted Beirut, the Lebanese capital. An Israeli airstrike killed a senior Hamas leader in Beirut in January.
U.S. and Arab diplomats involved in efforts to defuse tensions in the region were concerned that Israel chose to strike Beirut, with one U.S. official saying there are fears the situation could now spiral. Hezbollah had warned that it would respond if one of its senior leaders was targeted, the Arab diplomats said.
The Israeli military called the attack “a targeted strike in Beirut, on the commander responsible for the murder of the children” in the Golan Heights and other Israeli civilians. “Hezbollah crossed the red line,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a social-media post shortly after the strike.
The strike killed a civilian woman and wounded 68 others, all civilians, according to the Lebanese health ministry. First responders who rushed to the scene transported the wounded to various Beirut hospitals.
Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, denounced the strike, saying, “This criminal act that took place tonight is one in a series of aggressive operations that are killing civilians in clear and explicit violation of international law.”
The target of the strike was Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah military leader, according to a Lebanese security official and a Hezbollah official. Shukr was previously sanctioned and designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. He played a role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut which killed 241 American personnel, and also aided Hezbollah forces fighting rebels in Syria, according to a Justice Department notice offering a $5 million reward for information about him.
Israel and the U.S. have accused the Iran-backed Hezbollah of carrying out Saturday’s strike in Majdal Shams, a community of the Druze religious minority, which also wounded about 40 people. Hezbollah said it had nothing to do with the deaths in Majdal Shams, but claimed responsibility for other attacks in the area on the same day, including launching a rocket at an Israeli military site a few miles from the strike scene.
While all sides have indicated they aren’t interested in an all-out war, the continuing fighting and Tuesday’s strike raise the risk of a miscalculation that could result in a wider conflict.
Before Tuesday’s strike, the Biden administration had scrambled to calm tensions following the Golan Heights attack, hoping for an Israeli response that would send a strong signal to Hezbollah but not spark a wider war. U.S. officials had reached out to their counterparts in Israel and Lebanon, as well as other Arab countries, and traded indirect messages with Iran to try to de-escalate the situation, said Arab and European officials familiar with the matter.
After the strike, a White House spokeswoman said the Biden administration doesn’t want to see an all-out war spread into Lebanon. “We believe that there’s a diplomatic solution here,” she said.
A U.S. official said Israel gave Washington indications ahead of time about the strike, including the location, the fact that it would target a person and that it would be “limited in scope.”
The Lebanese government had communicated that a strike on Beirut would cross a red line, and diplomats trying to avoid a wider conflict worried that the situation would escalate after the Israeli strike.
“Hezbollah can respond with attacks on military targets in northern Israel, if they don’t make more mistakes,” said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program director at International Crisis Group.
The challenge facing Israel before Tuesday’s strike was to calibrate a response that would punish Hezbollah and satisfy the Israeli public, while avoiding crossing a line that would lead to full-scale war on an additional front, amid the war in Gaza.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah had continued earlier Tuesday, and an Israeli man was killed as a result of a strike on northern Israel.
“We don’t want this to expand into a wider war. Whether this expands into a wider war is pretty much up to Hezbollah on how they react,” said a senior Israeli official, who said Israel would respond to any Hezbollah retaliation.
Any full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah could come at a high cost to both sides in terms of death and destruction. During their previous war, in 2006, Israel bombed Beirut’s civilian airport and other infrastructure. Gallant said in June that Israel was capable of bombing Lebanon “back to the stone age.”
“The targeting of a senior Hezbollah commander at the site of the group’s Shura Council underlines how exposed Hezbollah is to Israeli intelligence,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, an international affairs institute in London, referring to a group of Hezbollah leaders. “This vulnerability will constrain any retaliation by Hezbollah.”
Israel has long prepared its military and intelligence apparatus for the possibility of a war on its northern border, and its air force could cause widespread destruction in the country.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has bulked up its military capabilities in recent years with the help of Iran. It is well armed, with between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles, according to estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has claimed that Hezbollah’s precision missiles are capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Hezbollah is also Iran’s most important asset among its array of allied militias across the region. A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would heighten the risk of Iran becoming more deeply involved in the conflict. Iran and Israel engaged in an unprecedented direct exchange of fire in April.
Israel’s retaliation comes amid U.S.-led efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in Gaza. An escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could disrupt those negotiations, which have been stalled for months but resumed Sunday, when top negotiators met in Rome. Negotiating teams are expected to meet again later this week.
A cease-fire in Gaza could bring calm to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and provide time for further diplomatic efforts but also time for Israel to focus its forces for possible escalation on its northern border with Lebanon.
Iranian-allied militant groups—including Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and Iraqi militias—have launched drones and rockets at Israel since Oct. 7 in what they say is solidarity with Gaza. Iran conducted its first direct attack on Israeli territory in April with over 300 missiles and drones launched at the country, an attack that Israel largely thwarted, with help from the U.S. and other countries. The U.S. also worked behind the scenes then to avert a wider war between the two countries.
Carrie Keller-Lynn and Lara Seligman contributed to this article.
