Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday that an Israeli air strike in Beirut's southern suburbs on Tuesday killed its high-ranking commander, Fouad Shokor, and four civilians and injured 80 other.
Fouad Shokor is the highest-ranking Hezbollah figure to be killed since its decades-long conflict with Israel intensified following Hamas attacks on southern Israel in October last year.
Israel claims Shokor was behind the July 27 strike on the Golan Heights that killed 12 children, a charge Hezbollah denies.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah issued a statement mourning its top military commander and said that it would provide more details about Shokor's death during his funeral on Thursday. Meanwhile, operations to clear rubble from the attack site are progressing slowly.
Local residents in Dahieh, the southern suburb of Beirut which is known as a Hezbollah stronghold, recalled the horrifying moment of the Israeli strike and expressed their anger over the incident.
"The first couple of seconds you don't understand and comprehend what's happening, but then I knew that it was Israel and a bomb from Israel. First of all, you feel some kind of fright, but we're not afraid. Let's be honest, we're not afraid of Israel, obviously. But yeah, that's about it. Just a bomb. They were trying to kill somebody," said one young man who had been near the residential building when it was hit.
"What happened in Dahieh is that people were going about their normal lives and I was in Haret Hreik, and suddenly we heard a loud noise and some people said they bombed. They bombed a building in the area. Even if Israel targets us more than once, we will come back stronger," said a female resident.
Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that the attack on Beirut risked escalating the situation from a conflict with Israel to one of open danger, with all officials in the caretaker government strongly condemning the Israeli strike.
Israel's assassinations of Shokor in Lebanon on Tuesday and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday, have raised alarm concerns around the world of a rapid and deadly escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
Hezbollah confirms senior commander killed in Israeli air strike in Beirut suburb
Hezbollah confirms senior commander killed in Israeli air strike in Beirut suburb
China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has launched a special action plan to boost the employment of college graduates across the country, said an official with the ministry at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
Zhang Wenmiao, director of the Human Resource Mobility Management Department under the ministry, said the project has mobilized 251,000 employers to provide about 4.77 million job positions across the country. Over 6,138 human resource service agencies participated in it, attracting 2.86 million job seekers, including college graduates. Among them, 585,000 reached preliminary employment agreements.
"The employment service campaign focuses primarily on the 2025 cohort of college graduates, as well as those from previous years who remain unemployed after graduation, and participants in grassroots programs such as the 'Three Supports and One Assistance' plan (a program that sends college graduates to rural areas to support education, agriculture, healthcare and poverty alleviation). We have mobilized a range of human resource service agencies, national human resource service industry parks, and talent markets to widely offer market-oriented job positions. We have also innovated recruitment methods by organizing a series of activities, including online and offline job fairs, live-streaming recruitment events, and bringing human resource services directly to college campuses," the official said.
The ministry also introduced new policies to support employment and entrepreneurship for young people. These measures include expanding public sector job opportunities, encouraging private sector recruitment, and encouraging graduates to seek employment in grassroots communities and small- and medium-sized enterprises.
In total, the ministry offered job-seeking subsidies to over 2 million disadvantaged college graduates, particularly those from low-income urban families, rural poor families, and families with disabled members.
China launches new campaign to boost employment among college graduates