Security sources say that Israel killed a Hezbollah leader in a raid on Beirut

Two security sources in Lebanon say that on Tuesday, Israel killed a Hezbollah commander who was in charge of the group’s rocket section in an airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut. This happened as fears of a full-on war in the Middle East grew.

The reports said that the commander who was killed was named Ibrahim Qubaisi. Six people were killed in the attack, which was another defeat for the group backed by Iran. They have been losing a lot of ground to Israel over the past week.

The pressure on Hezbollah has made people more afraid that a conflict that has been going on for almost a year will burst and make the oil-producing Middle East less stable. In Gaza, a conflict between Hamas and Israel is already going on with no end in sight.

After a new round of airstrikes on targets in Lebanon, Israel hit the part of the Lebanese city that is controlled by Hezbollah for the second day in a row. Hezbollah said it had shot rockets into northern Israel earlier on Tuesday.

Israel has been at war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza on its southern border for almost 12 months. Now, it is turning its attention to the northern border, where Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel to help Hamas, which is backed by Iran.

Lebanese health officials said that six people were killed and fifteen were hurt in the attack in Beirut, which happened in a building in the busy Ghobeiry area. One of the security sources showed a picture of damage on the fifth floor of the building.

Monday, the Israeli military attacked Hezbollah from the air, killing more than 500 people, according to the government of Lebanon. It was the deadliest day in the country in decades.

The Israeli government wants to secure the northern border and allow people to return, which has set the stage for a long war. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has said it will not give up until there is a halt in Gaza.

Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi promised to keep the pressure on Hezbollah after a security assessment. “The situation requires continued, intense action in all arenas,” he said.

The government of Lebanon said that Israel’s bombings on Monday killed 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women. They said that 1,835 more people were hurt and that tens of thousands more have fled for safety.

The number of deaths and the intensity of the attacks by the most advanced and strong military in the Middle East have caused panic in Lebanon. When Israel and Hezbollah fought in 2006, they destroyed the country completely.

He said, “We are waiting for victory, God willing, because we can’t sleep safe as long as we have a neighbor like Israel.” Hassan Omar is from Beirut.

According to Afif Ibrahim, a cab driver from southern Lebanon, “They (Israel) want us (Lebanese) to kneel, but we only kneel to God in our prayers; we bow our heads to no one but God.”

Calls for a dilution

As the violence gets worse, there are more calls for diplomacy. Volker Turk, the head of the UN human rights office, has asked all states and other influential groups to stop things from getting worse in Lebanon.

National security adviser to the White House Jake Sullivan told MSNBC that he thought there was still “a path forward” to de-escalation and a peaceful solution.

On the border between Israel and Lebanon, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer asked everyone to be calm and said, “I call again for all parties to step back from the brink.” Is this what you mean?

People are afraid that the US, which is a close friend of Israel, and Iran, which has proxies in the Middle East like Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed groups in Iraq, will get involved in a bigger war.

Hezbollah lost a lot of money last week when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that its members were using went off. It was the worst security breach in the group’s history.

Many people thought that Israel was behind the operation. Israel has a long history of carrying out sophisticated strikes on other countries. It hasn’t said for sure or not that it is responsible.

Israel has a big advantage in both Gaza and Lebanon because of how smart and tech-savvy its people are. It has found and killed a number of top Hezbollah and Hamas figures.

But Hezbollah has shown that it can be strong during decades of fighting with Israel. The group is a stronger enemy than Hamas. It was started by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to fight an Israeli attack of Lebanon.

The group said in a Telegram message on Tuesday that they attacked an Israeli army base with a new rocket called Fadi 3.

Israel’s media office dropped leaflets into Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley that had a “very dangerous” barcode on them. The fliers said that scanning the barcode with a phone would “withdraw all information” from any device.

The Israeli forces didn’t say anything right away. Hiszbollah’s press office did not say if the flyers had any other writing on them.

An Arab TV station called Al-Mayadeen said that Hadi al-Sayyed, a reporter who worked for their website, was killed on Monday when Israel attacked his city.

It means that four journalists have been killed in Lebanon since October. Two more Al-Mayadeen reporters were killed in November, and Reuters pictures reporter Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli tank fire in October.