Lebanon health ministry raises death toll from Israeli strike on Beirut ...

The Lebanese health ministry has raised the death toll from an Israeli strike on Beirut's suburbs to at least 31, including three children and seven women.

The strike on Friday was the first such Israeli attack on Lebanon's capital in months and came shortly after Lebanon's Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets.

Before the updated death toll was announced during a televised news conference on Saturday, the ministry had said at least 14 people were killed and 66 people were injured.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and other senior members of an elite Hezbollah unit were killed in the air strike, which sharply escalated the year-long conflict between Israel and the militant group.

Hezbollah confirmed Aqil's death in a statement that called him "one of its top leaders", without providing details of how he died.

In a second statement issued later, Hezbollah said Aqil was killed in Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh in what it called a "treacherous Israeli assassination".

It also said Ahmed Wahbi, a commander who oversaw the military operations of the al-Hajj Radwan Force during the war in Gaza until early 2024, was also killed in the Israeli strike.

The group said several more of its members were killed, but it did not disclose whether they were commanders or its foot soldiers.

The strikes came after communication devices, including pagers and two-way radios used by Hezbollah, detonated earlier this week, reportedly killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,400 others.

Hezbollah has described it as an Israeli attack.

Weaponising ordinary communication devices would represent a new development in warfare — and targeting thousands of Lebanese people using pagers, two-way radios and electronic equipment without their knowledge was a violation of international human rights law, the United Nations human rights chief said on Friday.

Volker Türk told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council there must be an independent and transparent investigation of the device explosions in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Those who ordered and carried out these attacks must be held to account," he said.

When reporters asked Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon about speculation Israel was behind the explosions, he said: "We are not commenting."

AP/Reuters