Israel says its strike on Beirut killed top Hezbollah military official as Lebanon reports 12 died

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched a rare airstrike that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated neighborhood of southern Beirut on Friday, the Israeli army said. It was the deadliest such attack on Lebanon’s capital in years. At least 12 others were reported killed in the attack.

The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the strike on Beirut's southern Dahiya district targeted and killed Ibrahim Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, as well as 10 other Hezbollah operatives.

There was no immediate confirmation of Akil's death from Hezbollah.

The Israeli military did not elaborate on the identities of the other commanders allegedly killed in the strike on the crowded urban neighborhood. Lebanese health officials said at least 12 people were killed and 66 others were wounded there. Nine of the wounded, they said, were in serious condition.

A Hezbollah official confirmed that Akil was supposed to be in the building that was hit but gave no further information. Akil has served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council, and has been sanctioned by the United States for being involved in two terrorist attacks in 1983 that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks.

Lebanon's local networks aired footage showing first responders combing through the rubble of two flattened apartment buildings in Jamous area, just kilometers from downtown Beirut where Hezbollah conducts many of its political and security operations.

The strike hit during rush hour as people were leaving work and children heading home from school.

“The attack in Lebanon is to protect Israel," Hagari said at a news conference following the strike, describing Akil as one of Hezbollah militants responsible for the group's regular rocket fire into Israel.

earlier on Friday, Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets as the the region awaited the revenge promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over this week’s mass bombing attack on pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members.

The strike — apparently the deadliest such Israeli attack on a neighborhood of Beirut since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody, monthlong war in 2006 — signaled a major escalation in the past 11 months of cross-border attacks.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel triggered the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But the cross-border attacks, while raising fears of an all-out regional war, have largely struck evacuated communities in northern Israel and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.

The last time Israel hit Beirut was in a July airstrike that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.

Speaking to journalists, Hagari described Shukr and Akil as two military officials closest to Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.

He accused Akil of plotting a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians that stretched over the decades, as well as master-minding an unfulfilled plan to invade northern Israel in a similar way to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.

Last year, the State Department posted a $7 million reward for information leading to Akil's identification, location, arrest or conviction and said he also directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Following the Israeli airstrike on Beirut, Hezbollah announced two more attacks on northern Israel, one of which it said targeted an intelligence base from which it claimed Israel directed assassinations, the latest in a string of rocket barrages this week targeting Israeli military sites that Israel said caused limited damage and no casualties. Fire crews were working to extinguish blazes caused by pieces of debris that fell to the ground in several areas.

The Israeli army ordered residents in parts of the Golan Heights and northern Israel to avoid public gatherings, minimize movements and stay close to shelters in anticipation of further rocket fire.

The region has been even more on edge since Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse this week, killing at least 20 people and wounding thousands in Lebanon in attacks widely attributed to Israel. The sophisticated attacks have heightened fears that the cross-border exchanges of fire will escalate into all-out war. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attacks.

The Israeli military said that 120 missiles were launched at areas of the Golan Heights, Safed and the Upper Galilee, some of which were intercepted. the military said. The military didn’t say whether any missiles had hit targets or caused any casualties.

Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire since Oct. 8, a day after the Israel-Hamas war’s opening salvo, but Friday’s rocket barrages were heavier than normal.

Nasrallah on Thursday vowed to keep up daily strikes on Israel despite this week’s deadly sabotage of its members’ communication devices, which he described as a “severe blow.”

In recent days, Israel has moved a powerful fighting force up to the northern border, officials have escalated their rhetoric, and the country’s security Cabinet has designated the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel an official war goal.

Fighting in Gaza has slowed, but casualties continue to rise.

Overnight, Palestinian authorities said that 15 people were killed in multiple Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

Those included six people, including an unknown number of children, in an airstrike early Friday morning in Gaza City that hit a family home, Gaza’s Civil Defense said. Another person was killed in Gaza City when a strike hit a group of people on a street.

Israel maintains that it only targets militants, and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. The military, which rarely comments on individual strikes, had no immediate comment.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count, but says a little over half of those killed were women and children.

The war has caused vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A woman checks the scene of a missile strike from her damaged house in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Rescuers carry a body at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Ambulances arrive at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

People and rescuers gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will not speak or appear at former President Donald Trump 's rally on Saturday in the eastern part of his state following a CNN report about his alleged posts on a pornography website's message board, two people familiar with the matter said Friday.

Robinson is not expected to attend the event in Wilmington, according to a person on the Trump campaign and a second person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

Robinson has been a frequent presence at Trump's North Carolina campaign stops. The Republican nominee has referred to Robinson, who is Black, as “Martin Luther King on steroids" and long praised him. But in the wake of Thursday's CNN report, the Trump campaign issued a statement that didn't mention Robinson and instead spoke generally about how North Carolina was key to the campaign's efforts.

With the deadline now passed for him to withdraw, Robinson remained the Republican candidate for governor on Friday. His decision to keep campaigning could threaten GOP prospects in other key races, including Trump's efforts in a battleground state he twice won.

Robinson has denied writing the posts, which include racial and sexual comments. He said wouldn't be forced out of the race by “salacious tabloid lies.” While Robinson won his GOP gubernatorial primary in March, he's been trailing in several recent polls to Democratic nominee Josh Stein, the state's attorney general.

“Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story — those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he told supporters in a video released by his campaign. “You know my words. You know my character.”

State law says a gubernatorial nominee had until Thursday night to withdraw as a candidate, the day before the first absentee ballots requested by military and overseas voters are distributed. The State Board of Elections is unaware of any such withdrawal notice, spokesperson Pat Gannon said. State Republican leaders could have picked a replacement had a withdrawal occurred.

“We are staying in this race," Robinson said in the video. "We are in it to win it."

Robinson has a history of inflammatory comments that Stein has said made him too extreme to lead North Carolina. They already have contributed to the prospect that campaign struggles for Robinson could help Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris win the state’s 16 electoral votes.

“The fallout is going to be huge,” Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said Friday.

Losing swing district races for a congressional seat and the General Assembly would endanger the GOP's control of the U.S. House and retaining veto-proof majorities at the legislature.

CNN, which describes a series of comments that it said Robinson posted on the message board more than a decade ago, sent tremors through the state’s political class. While the state Republican Party came to Robinson’s defense, individual GOP leaders raised concerns and suggested Robinson needed to address the allegations more fully.

CNN reported that Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, attacked civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in searing terms and once referred to himself as a “black NAZI.” CNN also reported that Robinson wrote of being aroused by a memory of “peeping” women in gym showers when he was 14 along with an appreciation of transgender pornography. Robinson at one point referred to himself as a “perv,” according to CNN.

The Associated Press has not independently confirmed that Robinson wrote and posted the messages. CNN said it matched details of the account on the pornographic website forum to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name.

CNN reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information. It also compared figures of speech that came up frequently in his public Twitter profile that appeared in discussions by the account on the pornographic website.

The state GOP said in a statement late Thursday that while Robinson has “categorically denied the allegations" it wouldn’t “stop the Left from trying to demonize him via personal attacks.”

But U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who endorsed a Robinson rival in the primary — citing Robinson's lack of legislative and business experience — said on X that Thursday “was a tough day, but we must stay focused on the races we can win."

“If Harris takes NC, she takes the White House," he added. "We can't let that happen.”

Democrats jumped on Robinson and other Republicans after the report aired, using every opportunity to show on social media photos of Robinson with Trump or with other GOP candidates attempting to tarnish them by association.

Stein and his allies have highlighted past comments by Robinson, such as a Facebook post from 2019 in which Robinson said abortion in America was about “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” And there's a 2021 speech by Robinson in a church in which he used the word “filth” when discussing gay and transgender people.

Robinson, 56, was elected lieutenant governor in his first bid for public office in 2020. He tells a life story of childhood poverty, jobs that he blames the North American Free Trade Agreement for ending, and personal bankruptcy.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a top surrogate for Harris, said late Thursday on X that Trump and state GOP leaders “embraced Mark Robinson for years knowing who he was and what he stood for ... They reap what they sow.”

Price reported from New York.

Robinson will not appear at Trump's North Carolina rally after report on alleged online comments

Robinson will not appear at Trump's North Carolina rally after report on alleged online comments

FILE - North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Asheville, N.C., Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)