Israel’s military said Monday it carried out an airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed a Hezbollah commander who had conducted multiple attacks targeting northern Israel.
An Israeli military statement identified the commander as Ali Ahmad Hassin of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force.
The militant group announced the death of one of its fighters by the same name without giving details about his death.
Israel Defense Forces said the strike also killed two other people.
Cross-border attacks by Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been common throughout Israel’s six-month-old war against Hezbollah ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Also Monday, the Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike in the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza in response to multiple rocket launches.
Israeli officials announced Sunday the withdrawal of troops from Khan Younis.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said forces were “exiting and preparing for their next missions,” which included a coming mission in the Rafah area.
The war has driven more than half of Gaza’s population to Rafah, an area located along the Gaza-Egypt border.
The United States, United Nations and others have warned of the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe if Israel carries out a major offensive in Rafah.
Israeli officials have pledged to protect the civilians sheltering in the area but have yet to give a detailed plan of where those civilians might safely go.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday marked six months since the war began and said Israel is close to achieving its goal of eliminating the Hamas terror group.
"We are one step away from victory,” he told his Cabinet. “But the price we paid is painful and heartbreaking."
Even as stalled cease-fire negotiations resumed in Cairo, Netanyahu pledged, "There will be no cease-fire without the return of hostages. It just won't happen."
Hamas is believed to still be holding about 100 hostages in Gaza tunnels, among the 250 or so it captured in its shock October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. As of mid-February, 112 hostages had been freed, most during a week-long cease-fire in November, while 36 more are believed to have died or been killed in Gaza during the six months of fighting.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says Israel’s counteroffensive has killed more than 33,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children. The Israeli military says that the total includes thousands of militants it has killed.
With the carnage mounting, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, appealed Sunday for an end to the war.
He acknowledged the “barbaric act” of the initial Hamas attack but said, “This atrocity does not justify the horrific ongoing bombardment, siege and health system demolition by Israel in Gaza, killing, injuring and starving hundreds of thousands of civilians, including aid workers.”
“The deaths and grievous injuries of thousands of children in Gaza will remain a stain on all of humanity,” he said on the X social media platform. “This assault on present and future generations must end.”
Attack on aid workers
World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres renewed his call Sunday for an independent investigation into the Israeli airstrike that killed seven of his group’s aid workers last week. Israel has called the attack a “tragic mistake,” while dismissing two officers responsible for the strike and reprimanding others.
In an interview on ABC, Andres thanked Israel for a quick investigation but added, “At the same time, I would say with something so complicated, the investigation should be much more deeper. And I would say that the perpetrator cannot be investigating himself."
He said that Israel was targeting anything that "seems" to move and has been doing so "for too long."
"This doesn't seem like a war against terror. This doesn't seem any more like a war about defending Israel," he said. "It really, at this point, seems like a war against humanity itself."
White House national security spokesman John Kirby told ABC, "There’s going to have to be some changes to the way the Israeli Defense Forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza, to make sure that [the attack on aid workers] doesn't happen again.”
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
