Israeli strike on Beirut building kills Hezbollah spokesman

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Mohammad Afif was a long-time media advisor to Hezbollah’s former secretary general Hassan Nasrallah.

A Hezbollah official says an Israeli strike in central Beirut has killed the group’s main spokesman, Mohammad Afif.

The strike on a building in a densely populated district of the Lebanese capital on Sunday also injured three others, officials said. There was no evacuation order for the area published on the Israeli military spokesperson’s account on social media platform X before the strike.

The strike hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood where many people displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs by the Israeli bombardment had been seeking refuge.

Afif was Hezbollah’s top media relations officer, and the point of contact for the organisation known among many journalists in Beirut.

Before taking over the Iran-backed group’s media relations office, he managed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station for several years.

“Clearly, this is a continuation of the Israeli policy to go after not only the military wing of Hezbollah but also officials within the administrative side of the organisation”, said Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari. “What Israel is trying to is diminish the groups’ capabilities on all fronts: Economic, social, political, military,” she added.

Afif hosted several press conferences for journalists amid the rubble in the southern suburbs of the capital. In his most recent comments to reporters on November 11, he said Israeli troops had been unable to occupy any territory in Lebanon and Hezbollah had enough weapons and supplies to fight a “long war”.

His killing is the latest in a string of assassinations of Hezbollah’s leaders, including its secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, since Israel dramatically intensified its attacks across Lebanon in late September after one year of fire exchanges along the border.