At least one person was killed after an Israeli strike targeted the southern suburbs of Lebanon's capital Beirut on Tuesday, in the latest escalation of tensions in the region.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that the strike, carried out with a drone that launched three rockets, killed one woman and wounded several other people, some of them seriously. The wounded were taken to nearby hospitals. Bahman Hospital near the site of the blast called on people to donate blood.
The attack comes days after Israel said it would retaliate over an alleged attack on the annexed Golan Heights.
The strike was reported in the vicinity of Hezbollah Shura Council headquarters in Haret Hreik.
The Israeli military said it carried out a targeted strike in Beirut on Tuesday against the Hezbollah commander it claimed responsible for a strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 people over the weekend.
A loud blast was heard and a plume of smoke could be seen rising above the southern suburbs - a stronghold of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah - at around 7:40 p.m. (1640 GMT), a Reuters witness said.
"The IDF carried out a targeted strike in Beirut, on the commander responsible for the murder of the children in Majdal Shams and the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians," the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement.
It said it had issued no new instructions for civil defense in Israel following the strike.
Lebanon's Prime Minister condemned the Israeli strike.
Najib Mikati "condemned the blatant Israeli aggression on the southern suburbs of Beirut", his office said in a statement, describing it as a "criminal act" in a "series of aggressive operations killing civilians in clear and explicit violation of international law."
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that senior commander Fuad Shukr, who is leading the group's operations against Israel in south Lebanon, survived an Israeli strike in the group's southern Beirut stronghold.
Shukr, "who goes by the nom de guerre Mohsen Shukr, survived the Israeli strike," the source told AFP, requesting anonymity.
He added that the commander is "in charge of commanding military operations in southern Lebanon", where the group has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel since October.
Shukr is the successor of Hezbollah's top commander Imad Mughniyeh, killed in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus that the Iran-backed group blamed on Israel, the source said.
In 2017, the U.S. Treasury offered $5 million for information on Shukr, describing him as "a senior adviser" to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and saying he had "a central role" in the deadly 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
At least 531 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. Most have been fighters, but the toll includes at least 105 civilians.
Beirut has been on edge for days ahead of an anticipated Israeli attack in retaliation for a strike on the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed a dozen youngsters.
