Israel kills key Hezbollah commander who had close relationship with Iran

Israel's military has killed a key commander of ’s elite “Radwan” attack forces in an airstrike in southern Lebanon.

Battle-hardened Ahmad Shahadi led the “Radwan” fighters for five years as they fought al-Qaeda and other terror groups in Syria. Shahadi, a ruthless leader, is believed to have forged close relationships within ’s shadowy Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

His death is a massive blow to Hezbollah, which is still reeling from the killing of many of its commanders, including late leader . The safety of Nasrallah’s successor Naim Kassem is such a concern to Iran that he has already been ghosted to relative safety in Tehran.

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Shahadi's “Radwan” group has been training for years to launch a bloody October 7-style raid deep inside northern , slaughtering civilians. Their plans, exposed by intelligence, included storming northern Israel on motorbikes and other vehicles, launching lightning strikes on villagers.

Plans even included kidnapping Israelis and smuggling them back into Lebanon, where they could be used as bargaining tools. A deep and complex network of tunnels and underground bunkers crammed with weapons and explosives across southern Lebanon had been prepared.

But in recent weeks Israeli intelligence operators have helped the air force launch devastating tunnel-busting bombing raids across the Radwan’s network. On Wednesday Israeli troops issued an evacuation warning for residents in the entire eastern Lebanese city of Baalbeck, along with surrounding areas and key routes in the Bekaa Valley. The area marked for evacuation includes the ancient Roman temple complex, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Lebanon's Heath Ministry said more than 2,790 people have been killed and 12,700 wounded since October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October, a year after the Gazan Hamas fighters broke out and slaughtered 1,200 in Israel.

The death toll from more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has passed 43,000, Palestinian officials reported Monday, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. An Israeli military official says the target of Tuesday's attack on a five-story building that Gaza health officials reported resulted in scores of deaths was a spotter with binoculars in the building, and that the intent was not to destroy the structure.

The official said Wednesday the building was not known to be a shelter for civilians, and that it collapsed as a result of the strike on the spotter. The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that at least 70 people were killed in the first of two strikes on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, and that more than half of the victims were women and children. The Israeli military had earlier said it was investigating the strike.