The Albany Gazette - Israeli strikes on Beirut kill six, including Hezbollah official

Israel has been heavily bombing Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, since all-out war erupted on September 23, but attacks on central Beirut have been rarer.

The first strike, on Beirut's Ras al-Nabaa district, killed four people, including Hezbollah's media relations chief Mohammed Afif, the group and Israel's military said.

The health ministry said the second strike killed two people and wounded 22 in Mar Elias, raising an earlier toll of one dead and nine wounded.

"Israeli warplanes launched a strike on the Mar Elias area," the official National News Agency said of the densely packed district that also houses people displaced by the conflict.

AFP journalists heard the sound of explosions and then sirens amid a strong acrid smell of burning. AFP images showed a blaze at the site that firefighters were trying to extinguish.

A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity, told AFP that the strike hit an electronics store and a vehicle.

Lina, 59, whose home in Mar Elias is less than 500 metres (1,600 feet) from the strike site, said the raid hit a street she uses "every day to go to work".

"It's a residential area... Nowhere in the country is safe anymore," she said, requesting to be identified only by her first name.

The NNA said the strike "targeted a Jamaa Islamiya centre", referring to a Sunni Muslim group allied with Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

But Jamaa Islamiya lawmaker Imad Hout told AFP that "no centre or institution affiliated with the group is located in the area targeted by the strike, and no member of the group was targeted".

An earlier strike on central Beirut's Ras al-Nabaa district killed Afif, who the Israeli military described as Hezbollah's "chief propagandist".

The group described their spokesman as "a great martyr on the road to Jerusalem", the expression used for its members killed by Israel.

A total of four people, including a woman, were killed in that incident and 14 were wounded, Lebanon's health ministry said.

In the wake of Sunday's strikes, Lebanon's Education Minister Abbas Halabi said schools and higher education institutions in the Beirut area would remain closed for two days.

Israel's military on Sunday told AFP that it had struck "over 200 targets" in Lebanon since Saturday morning.

Israeli strikes in Lebanon's southern Tyr region killed 11 people and wounded 48 on Sunday, the health ministry said.

(W.Walker--TAG)