(CNN) – The Israeli military says it has killed Hezbollah commanders during Friday’s attacks in Lebanon.
“The Israeli Air Force (IAF) targeted and killed the commander of Hezbollah’s missile wing in southern Lebanon, Muhammad Ali Ismail, and his associate terrorist Hussein Ahmed Ismail,” the Israel Defense Forces (FDI) said early Saturday, local time.
“Other Hezbollah commanders and operatives were eliminated along with them,” they added.
The IDF said Mohammed Ali Ismail was responsible for directing attacks against Israel, including Wednesday’s launch of a surface-to-air missile.
Hezbollah has not confirmed the deaths of these figures.
Earlier on Friday, its spokesman said the Israeli armed forces said it carried out an airstrike on Friday against Hezbollah’s “central headquarters” in Beirut, Lebanon. An Israeli official told CNN that the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was the target of the attack.
Hours later, the IDF announced it had struck other buildings in Beirut’s Tahiye neighborhood that it said were storing Hezbollah missiles. The group, for its part, denied that weapons were stored in civilian buildings targeted by Israeli strikes.
“The enemy’s claims that there are weapons in bombed civilian buildings are completely false,” Hezbollah said in its first official comments on the airstrikes.
At least six people were killed and 91 injured in an Israeli airstrike against Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The ministry added that this is a preliminary count of victims. Rescuers are still searching through the rubble and the ministry “expects the death toll to rise in the coming hours.”
State news agency NNA reported that six buildings were completely destroyed by Israeli strikes.
CNN has geolocated a video shared on social media showing large plumes of smoke in the city’s southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh.
Dahiyeh is a densely populated area with a strong Hezbollah presence and many of the group’s leaders are based.
