An Israeli airstrike on a building in a central neighborhood of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday, November 17, 2024, reportedly killed the top spokesman for the Hezbollah terror group.
Two Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammed Afif was killed in the strike on the Ras al-Naba’a neighborhood. A Hezbollah official, speaking anonymously, confirmed this to The Associated Press.
The Israel Defense Forces, IDF, did not immediately issue a comment on the strike.
Unlike dozens of other Israeli attacks carried out in Beirut this past week, the strike killing Afif was not carried out in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh.
The building where Afif was targeted housed the offices of the Syrian Ba’ath Party, Lebanese media reported. The IDF did not issue any evacuation warning before the strike, as it was an assassination and did not target Hezbollah’s infrastructure.
Afif had been especially visible after Israel’s military escalation in September and following the assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was also killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Last month, Afif was forced to interrupt a press conference in Dahiyeh after the IDF’s Arabic language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, issued an evacuation order for residents of the area ahead of an airstrike.
|SituationReport|
