By admin 
Lebanese armed group Hezbollah confirmed that the head of media relations, Mohammad Afif, was killed on Sunday by an Israeli attack on a building in central Beirut.
Israel has rarely hit high-ranking Hezbollah personnel which have no clear military role, and the airstrikes are mainly aimed at Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group has the heaviest presence.
The Israeli military, which previously declined to comment, issued a statement late Sunday saying it had “eliminated” Afif. The Lebanese Health Ministry said the strike killed one person and injured three.
A second, separate attack later on Sunday hit Mar Elias Street, another central area rarely targeted by Israeli bombs, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least two people were killed and 22 injured in the strike.
So have Hezbollah and Israel traded fire for more than a year, since the group began launching rockets at Israeli military targets on October 8, 2023. That was a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, Israeli authorities said.
In late September, Israel expanded its military campaign in Lebanon, heavily bombing the south and east and southern suburbs of Beirut, in addition to ground incursions on the border.
Israel’s campaign in Lebanon has killed 3,841 people and injured nearly 15,000 others over the past year, the Lebanese Health Ministry said Sunday, a toll that made no distinction between civilians and fighters.
Hezbollah rockets fired across the border have killed dozens of Israelis, including soldiers and civilians, Israel says.
A separate attack on the Gaza Strip Israel’s war against Hamas has killed more than 43,000 people, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian health officials.
Lebanese soldiers killed
In addition to the attacks on Hezbollah, the escalation killed several Lebanese army soldiers, including two who were killed on Sunday when Israel attacked an army post in the southern city of Al-Mari, the Lebanese army said on X.
Two other soldiers were injured, the report said.
The attack in Beirut against the Hezbollah official hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood, where many people driven from the southern suburbs by Israeli bombing have taken refuge.
Lebanese security sources said a building housing Ba’ath Party offices had been hit, and the party’s head in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif had been in the building.
Ambulances could be heard rushing to the scene and guns were fired to prevent the crowd from approaching.
The Lebanese Broadcaster showed video of a building with its upper floors collapsed and civil defense workers on the scene.
Afif was a longtime media adviser to Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed on September 27 in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
He headed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the group’s media office.
Afif organized several press conferences for journalists amid the rubble in Beirut’s southern suburbs. In his most recent comments to reporters on November 11, he said that Israeli forces could not hold any territory in Lebanon, and that Hezbollah had enough weapons and supplies to fight a long war.
(Reporting by Beirut bureau; additional reporting by Menna Alaa El Din and Emily Rose; Editing by John Davison, Kevin Liffey, Andrew Cawthorne and Cynthia Osterman)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Israeli attack kills Hezbollah media head, Hezbollah confirms death