JERUSALEM/BEIRUT – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Sunday that it killed five senior commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force in a precision strike in Beirut.
The overnight attack, carried out by the Israeli navy, targeted the commanders while they were meeting at a hotel in central Beirut, the IDF said.
The Quds Force’s Lebanon Corps serves as a key liaison between Hezbollah and Iran, and the targeted commanders were allegedly coordinating militant activity across Lebanon from a civilian hotel, the IDF said.
Lebanese media said the strike hit the Ramada Hotel in the Raouche area, a popular tourist district near the landmark Pigeon Rocks along the Mediterranean coast. The hotel was also housing displaced people who fled fighting elsewhere in Lebanon, and some were seen leaving in fear of further attacks.
2 Israeli soldiers killed
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said that two soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon, marking the first acknowledgment of military casualties by the IDF since its Feb 28 attacks on Iran.
Israel’s state-owned Kan TV News reported that the two IDF soldiers were inside a D9 engineering vehicle operating near a defense post along the border in Lebanese territory when Hezbollah militants fired an anti-tank missile or mortar shell at them.
Meanwhile, altogether five people were injured by Iranian missile fire in Israel on Sunday, according to the country’s national emergency service MDA and media reports.
In Beirut, Lebanese sources said at least 17 people were killed on Sunday afternoon in 37 Israeli airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon.
In southern Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike targeting a house and a car repair garage in the center of the town of Doueir killed six members of one family, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Two Israeli strikes on the village of Alma al-Shaab killed Sami Al-Ghafri, the brother of a local priest, and a farmer, the NNA reported.
Israeli artillery shelling targeting about 15 workers, most of them Syrian nationals, at a farm in the town of Yahmar al-Shaqif in Nabatieh district, killed seven Syrian workers, according to the NNA and an unnamed Lebanese Civil Defense official.
Two Israeli strikes on the Ain al-Hilweh camp in the city of Sidon killed one person and injured three others, said the official.
In eastern Lebanon, an Israeli strike targeting an excavator in the village of Brital killed one Syrian national and injured another, the NNA reported.
According to the sources, Israeli airstrikes launched on Sunday morning in southern Lebanon have already killed 40 people.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Sunday that from March 2 until Sunday noon, the death toll in the country from clashes with Israel has risen to 394, including 83 children and 42 women, with 1,130 injuries. Nine rescue workers have also died. The figure marks a sharp increase from Saturday, when the ministry reported 294 fatalities.
A total of about 517,000 displaced people have been registered on Lebanon’s government relief platform as Israeli attacks continue across the country, Lebanese Social Affairs Minister Haneen Sayed said on Sunday.
Sayed said that 117,228 displaced people are currently staying in 538 official shelters across Lebanon, while others registered online outside the shelters through the platform moza-relief.com.