RAAYAK, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli airstrikes in eastern Lebanon have killed eight members of the Hezbollah militant group, including several local officials, two officials with the militant group said Saturday.
The Lebanese Health Ministry put the death toll at 10, but did not distinguish between militants and civilians.
Eight militants were killed in an attack late Friday near the village of Layak in northeastern Lebanon, Hezbollah officials told The Associated Press. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media about such details.
An Associated Press team visited the strike site Saturday morning and found the top floor of a three-story building had been destroyed.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that several members of Hezbollah’s missile force at three different command centers in Lebanon’s Baalbek region had been “neutralized.”
The Israeli army added that the slain Hezbollah members were identified as “accelerating the process of combat readiness and force building while planning fire attacks against Israel.”
A Hezbollah official said three of the dead were local commanders, namely Ali Mousavi, Mohammed Mousavi and Hussein Yaqi.
Yaqi is the son of prominent Hezbollah official and one of its founders Muhammad Yaqi, who died in 2023. Muhammad Yaqi was also a close aide to the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September 2024.
An Israeli attack in eastern Lebanon killed 10 people and wounded 24 others, including three children, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Ali Abdullah, executive director of Raya Hospital, told The Associated Press that the attack occurred after sunset, adding that they had received 10 bodies and 21 injured. He added that the dead included two non-Lebanese – a Syrian man and an Ethiopian woman. The injured included five Syrians and three Ethiopians.
Ethiopians often come to Lebanon as migrant domestic workers.
A funeral was held on Saturday afternoon in the eastern village of Nabichit for two Hezbollah members killed in the attack.
After Hamas-led attacks on Israel triggered the Gaza War on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets from Lebanon into Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.
Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery strikes. In September 2024, the low-level conflict escalated into a full-scale war, and two months later a U.S.-brokered ceasefire brought the conflict under control, but not completely stopped.
Israel has since accused Hezbollah of trying to rebuild and has launched almost daily attacks in Lebanon, allegedly targeting Hezbollah militants and facilities. Since the ceasefire, Hezbollah has claimed one attack on Israel.
The death toll from Friday’s attack was unusually high and came at a time of heightened tensions in the region as the United States threatened to hit Iran, a backer of Hezbollah and Hamas, if talks over Tehran’s nuclear program failed to reach an agreement.
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Mrouei reported from Beirut.