BEIRUT (Reuters) – An Israeli strike on a building in central Beirut on Sunday killed Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from the Iran-backed group.

Israel has rarely hit senior Hezbollah personnel who do not have clear military roles, and its air strikes have mostly targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs where the group has its heaviest presence.

A second, separate strike later on Sunday hit Mar Elias street, another central area rarely targeted by Israeli bombs, targeting a vehicle, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported. The Lebanese health ministry said that strike killed at least two people.

The Israeli military declined to comment in response to questions from Reuters about the strike that killed Afif. An Israeli military spokesperson’s account on the social media platform X that often publishes evacuation orders for areas about to be bombed showed no such warning before that strike.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire for more than a year, since the group began launching rockets at Israeli military targets on Oct. 8, 2023. That was a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, Israeli authorities say.

In late September, Israel expanded its military campaign in Lebanon, heavily bombing the south and east and the southern suburbs of Beirut alongside ground incursions along the border.

Israel’s campaign in Lebanon has in the last year killed 3,841 people and wounded nearly 15,000 others, the Lebanese health ministry said on Sunday, giving a toll that did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Hezbollah rockets fired across the border have killed dozens of Israelis, including soldiers and civilians, Israel says.

A separate assault on the Gaza Strip in Israel’s war against Hamas has killed more than 43,000 people, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian health officials.

LEBANESE SOLDIERS KILLED

In addition to targeting Hezbollah, the escalation has killed several soldiers of the Lebanese military, including two who died on Sunday when Israel attacked an army post in the southern town of Al-Mari, the Lebanese army said on X.

Two other soldiers were wounded, it said.

The strike in Beirut targeting the Hezbollah official hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighbourhood, where many people displaced from the southern suburbs by Israeli bombardment had sought refuge. 

The Lebanese security sources said a building housing offices of the Ba’ath Party had been hit, and the head of the party in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif had been in the building.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party, another political party with ties to Hezbollah, said in a statement that Afif had been killed but gave no details of how or where. The Lebanese health ministry said the strike had killed one and injured three.

Ambulances could be heard rushing to the scene, and guns were fired to prevent crowds approaching.

The broadcaster later also said Afif had been killed.

It showed footage of a building whose upper floors had collapsed onto the first storey, with civil defence workers at the scene.

Afif was a long-time media adviser to Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sept. 27. 

He managed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the group’s media office.

Afif hosted several press conferences for journalists among rubble in Beirut’s southern suburbs. In his most recent comments to reporters on Nov. 11, he said Israeli troops had been unable to hold any territory in Lebanon, and that Hezbollah had enough weapons and supplies to fight a long war.