Israel says the attack targeted ‘the central headquarters’ of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.

Israel has carried out several air raids in Lebanon’s capital Beirut that it said targeted the headquarters of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

The series of massive explosions sent huge clouds of smoke soaring above the densely populated Haret Hreik neighbourhood in Dahiyeh, southern Beirut, around dusk on Friday.

The Israeli military said the attack targeted the Iran-aligned group’s “central headquarters”, which it said were “embedded under residential buildings in the heart of the Dahiyeh in Beirut”.

Several buildings in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood of Dahiyeh were reduced to rubble, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported. The blast rattled windows and shook houses some 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Beirut. Ambulances were seen heading to the scene, sirens wailing.

At least two people were killed and 76 others were wounded in the attack, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said, noting that this was a preliminary toll.

“The attack in Beirut’s Haret Hreik suburb has erased a complete block close to the international airport of Beirut, and around six to nine buildings were either completely or partially destroyed,” said Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tyre in southern Lebanon.

“Israel has been working deliberately for the past weeks on hitting the southern suburb of Beirut, targeting Hezbollah commanders in different areas to dismantle the command chain of the group,” he added.

Israel has previously attacked targets in Dahiyeh four times over the last week, killing at least three senior Hezbollah military commanders.

But Friday’s attack was far more powerful, with multiple blasts shaking windows across the city, recalling Israeli air raids during the war it fought with Hezbollah in 2006.

The bombing came moments after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded his address to UN General Assembly delegates in New York, in which he pledged to keep up attacks against Hezbollah and fight until “total victory” in Gaza.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack showed Israel did not care about global calls for a Lebanon ceasefire.

Iran’s embassy in Lebanon said the attack represented a “serious escalation” and that the “perpetrator will be punished appropriately”.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon said the United States had no advance warning of the strike and that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as the operation was under way.

“The United States was not involved in this operation and we had no advanced warning,” spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

It appeared to be the most powerful attack in almost a year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which have traded near-daily cross-border fire since October, when the Lebanese group said it would carry out attacks on Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s war on the territory.

The fighting has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.

The Israeli military has escalated the conflict dramatically in recent days. At least 25 people were killed in Israeli attacks early on Friday, Health Minister Firass Abiad said, bringing the death toll in Lebanon this week to more than 720. He said the dead included dozens of women and children.

In his address to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu said that operations against Hezbollah would “continue until we meet our objectives”.

TOKYO (AP) — The person chosen Friday to lead Japan’s governing party, and become prime minister next week, is a veteran politician with deep policy experience, a taste for curry and anime — and big challenges ahead of him as he tries to unite a fractious party and hold off an opposition eager to capitalize on recent corruption scandals.

Shigeru Ishiba has long been popular with voters but has often struggled to win over his conservative fellow Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers.

A vocal critic of the hawkish politics of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he was long seen as a troublesome outsider by some party members. That makes Friday’s victory a huge comeback for Ishiba. It could also signal a break from years of Abe’s influence over the party, even after the former prime minister’s assassination.

Some analysts believe that Ishiba was chosen as much for his image as a centrist who can counter challenges by the more liberal main opposition party as for his policy views.

The 67-year-old former banker was running in the party leadership race for a fifth time and had said this was going to be his “final battle.”

Ishiba was first elected to parliament in 1986, after being influenced by the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who was popular with the public. He has served as defense minister, agriculture minister and in other key Cabinet posts, and as the LDP secretary general under Abe.

His party will now look for him to use his experience, stability and expertise to beat back the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which recently chose as its new leader former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a veteran known for his inspiring speeches.

University of Tokyo politics professor Yu Uchiyama said political parties tend to make centrist shifts to win elections, and Ishiba could do well in an upcoming parliamentary face-off with the opposition leader.

Considered a defense policy expert, Ishiba has proposed an Asian version of the NATO military alliance and a more equal and mutual Japan-U.S. security alliance, including having Japanese Self Defense Force bases in the United States.

Ishiba is a supporter of Taiwan’ s democracy. He calls for the establishment of a disaster management agency in one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

Ishiba has vowed to push for more diversity and gender equality. He supports a revision to a 19th century civil code that requires married couples to choose one of their surnames. That has caused most women to adopt their husband’s surname. Moves to change the code have stalled for decades because of LDP opposition.

At a recent speech in Tokyo, Ishiba said Japanese women are among the shortest sleepers in the world because of their heavy responsibilities both at work and home. He said most husbands, including himself, hardly help with childrearing and homemaking.

Ishiba also supports legalizing same-sex marriage.

Ishiba is known as a policy “otaku,” or nerd, especially in security and defense issues. He likes anime, building model warships and listening to 1970s and ‘80s Japanese pop songs. He says his favorite food is curried rice.

The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has drastically escalated over the last month as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has begun targeting the terrorist network’s hot spots and military storage units, all of which are strategically embedded within civilian villages.

Images and videos provided to Fox News Digital of the recent strikes in southern Lebanon show precision missiles hitting what have been deemed civilian buildings.

Hezbollah’s use of civilian infrastructure has not only created a sophisticated network of meeting houses, weapons storage units and well-hidden missile launching positions across southern Lebanon and in the suburbs of Beirut, it has ensured a war with Hezbollah cannot be conducted without immense collateral damage. 

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Since Monday, more than 1,800 casualties have been reported and at least 560 people are believed to have been killed, including 50 children and more than 90 women, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. 

On Thursday, the U.S. again urged Israel to agree to a cease-fire in Lebanon, and deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed with reporters that the U.S. is not aiding Jerusalem militarily or with intelligence in its Lebanon-based campaign.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the international community’s calls for a cease-fire and instead instructed his troops to continue fighting “with full force.”

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday warned Israel that it “cannot without consequence just expand its operations to Lebanon” as commanders on the Israeli-Lebanon border ordered its troops to “prepare” for a possible ground invasion. 

No invasion has been ordered at this time, though Israeli and U.S. security experts have told Fox News Digital that the network Hezbollah has established on the foundation of everyday life within Lebanon means war with the terrorist network will likely be even more costly in terms of human lives than what has been witnessed in Gaza.

Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes on villages in the Nabatiyeh district, seen from the southern town of Marjayoun, Lebanon, on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

According to the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center, a nonprofit organization that researches Israeli security challenges along the border with Lebanon, Hezbollah has long relied on the use of civilian infrastructure to serve its needs. 

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“The phenomenon of renting houses, rooms, warehouses within the Shiite civilian areas by Hezbollah is well known since the beginning of the 2000s,” Tal Beeri, head of the research department at Alma, told Fox News Digital, adding that the terrorists also rent structures in non-Shia areas of Lebanon as well.

“Evidence of this matter was found in looted documents and investigations of Hezbollah operatives during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Since then, Hezbollah has only accelerated the phenomenon and estimates are that every third house in southern Lebanon has been used by Hezbollah for its needs,” he added. 

Beeri shared research with Fox News Digital that showed findings from 2021 breaking down the sophisticated system in which Hezbollah has intertwined itself in the everyday running of local villages across the country. 

A man displays photographs as people sift through the rubble of a building in an area targeted overnight by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon’s town of Saksakiyeh, on Sept. 26, 2024. Israel flatly rejected on Sept. 26 a push led by key backer the United States for a 21-day cease-fire in Lebanon, as it vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah militants “until victory.” (Photo by MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images)

Hezbollah officials dubbed a “Rabat” – loosely translated to “the liaison” – are installed in villages across Lebanon and serve as the representative of the terrorist group, facilitating the needs of the villagers in coordination with the hyper-localized operations of Hezbollah.

The Rabat, which can oversee multiple villages, reportedly establishes relationships with the residents by facilitating requests for aid such as money, food and even with localized disputes.  

“In places where Hezbollah decides to expropriate or lease civilian land or properties from the residents for the purpose of its military activities, the ‘Rabat’ conducts the expropriation or leasing procedure vis-à-vis the relevant resident,” Beeri found. 

The report, based on documents seized following the 2006 war with Hezbollah, found that the Rabat also recommended to local Hezbollah units the best locations in each town that are “suitable to serve the human shield tactic” based on the storage requirements surrounding concealment, infrastructure type and weapons placement. 

Images show civilian buildings used by Hezbollah in Lebanon to store weapons. (Photo provided by Israel Defense Force)

The Rabat then coordinates the logistics between the terrorist organization and the local property owner. 

“The ‘Rabat’ strengthens Hezbollah’s grip on the Lebanese village residents’ day-to-day life, their property, and needs, allowing Hezbollah to turn them into human shields on a wider scale,” the report found.

Hezbollah’s control over local communities and its ability to stockpile and transfer weapons throughout the country through a sophisticated tunnel system signifies that the UN Resolution 1701 passed in 2006 to prevent a third war between the terrorist network and Israel has failed. 

While it remains unclear if U.N. Security Council members are looking to revamp the resolution to counter the terrorist group’s movements and stop Israeli operations in civilian areas, the international community has called on Netanyahu to cease his campaign – many leaders from both adversary and allied nations, have fervently warned against invading Lebanon.

Netanyahu is set to address the U.N. body on Friday during what has been described by the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. as the most “hostile” environment he has seen in his roughly 10 years of attending the top summit.