Israeli strikes kill at least 10 and wound 24 in Lebanon, health ministry says

At least 10 people have been killed and 24 wounded – including three children – in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley, the Lebanese health ministry has said.

Israel said it had hit “command centres” of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the Bekaa valley. Two security sources told Reuters that senior Hezbollah leader Hussein Yaghi was killed in the attacks.

Yaghi is the son of former Hezbollah MP Mohamed Yaghi, and his funeral is set to take place on Saturday, according to Hezbollah media.

Local television footage from the scene of one of the strikes showed the targeted site appeared to be an apartment building. Emergency crews were seen firefighting and searching for survivors.

Earlier on Friday another Israeli strike hit a Palestinian refugee camp in the port city of Sidon, killing two people.

The Israeli military said it struck a “Hamas command centre” in the Ain el-Hilweh camp. Hamas acknowledged that two of its members had been killed in the strike but said the claim it was a command centre was a “flimsy pretext”.

It said the targeted building belonged to a joint security force made up of various Palestinian factions tasked with maintaining security in the camp.

After 7 October 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets from Lebanon into Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.

Israel responded with airstrikes and shelling. The low-level conflict escalated into full-scale war in September 2024, before being reined in by a US-brokered ceasefire two months later.

Since then, Israel has accused Hezbollah of trying to rebuild and has carried out near-daily strikes in Lebanon that it says target militants and facilities. Hezbollah has claimed one strike against Israel since the ceasefire.

The death toll from Friday’s strikes was unusually high and comes at a moment of heightened tensions in the region with the US threatening to strike Iran – a backer of both Hezbollah and Hamas – if negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programme fail to produce a deal.

During last year’s Israel-Iran war, Hezbollah remained on the sidelines but many in Lebanon fear that the country will be pulled in should another war break out.