'Dozens' of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike as Hezbollah chief targeted in Beirut

Dozens of people are said to have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, while another Israeli strike in Beirut has killed Hezbollah's head of media relations.

Residents and medics said a multi-storey residential building housing at least six families had been targeted in the Gazan town of Beit Lahiya.

About 70 people were living in the property, the Palestinian Civil Emergency said, while the Gaza government media office said 72 people had been killed.

Video footage of the site of the strike, obtained by the Reuters news agency, showed bodies being pulled from a large pile of rubble, with surrounding houses also damaged, some of them heavily.

The Israeli military said several strikes were conducted overnight on "terrorist targets" in Beit Lahiya, and everything possible had been done to avoid civilians being harmed.

It added that any information released by the Hamas-run health ministry should be "treated with caution", claiming it had been "repeatedly proven unreliable in previous incidents".

In Beirut, an Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated district killed Hezbollah media chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters.

Security sources said it struck a building where the offices of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party are located.

The head of that party in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif had been in the building.

A Hezbollah official later told Reuters anonymously that Afif had been killed in the strike.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

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Ras al-Nabaa, the neighbourhood which was hit, is where many people displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs have been seeking refuge.

Afif was a long-term media advisor to Hezbollah's former head, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack in late September.

Afif managed Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the media office.

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire for more than a year.

(c) Sky News 2024: 'Dozens' of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike as Hezbollah chief targeted in Beirut