BEIRUT, November 23. /TASS/. Hezbollah has refuted reports about the death of the chief of its armed militias headquarters in an Israeli airstrike on central Beirut.
"The Israeli enemy delivered a strike on a residential house where not a single Hezbollah member lived," Amin Sherri, a member of the Fidelity to the Resistance Shiite parliamentary faction, told journalists. "We dismiss these reports as untrue. There are no military targets in Beirut."
"Israel once again attacked civilian population in the central part of the capita city," he said. "It [Israel] is taking out its anger on people in peaceful cities for the failure of its ground operation in southern Lebanon."
The Dubai-based Al Hadath television channel reported earlier that Israel’s morning air raid on Beirut targeted Muhammad Haydar, the chief of Hezbollah’s operations headquarters. The television channel did not say, however, whether the man had been killed or not.
According to the Naharnet news portal, Israeli warplanes used US-made Mark 84 air bombs weighting 925 kilograms meant to hit shelters and bunkers to deliver a strike on an eight-story building in Beirut’s Basta Fawqa quarters. The strike left a huge crater at the site of a supposed Hezbollah bunker under the building.
According to the portal, Muhammad Haydar is claiming central roles in Hezbollah military command after the deaths of former Hezbollah armed wing commander Fuad Shukr on July 31 and commander of Hezbollah’s elite unit Radwan Ibrahim Aqil on September 21.