Beirut | Pakistan

• Stages rare helicopter raid deep into Bekaa Valley, killing 41 • UN, Ghana condemn ‘war crime’ attack that wounded three peacekeepers BEIRUT: Israel warned Lebanon it would pay a “very heavy price” if it fai­l­­ed to control the Hezbollah group on Saturday, as Israeli forces pounded the Beirut with airstrikes and mounted a deadly airborne raid in the country’s east. The warning came as the cross-border conflict, which dragged Lebanon into a wider Middle East war on Monday following Hezbollah’s retaliation after Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayat­ollah Ali Khamenei, escalated sharply. On Saturday morning, more buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut lay as mounds of smoking rubble and twisted metal, Reuters video showed, after heavy Israeli bombardment that followed an evacuation order for civilians. ‘A night of hell’ Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, addressing Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun in a statement, said that if the Lebanese government failed to enforce a 2024 agreement to disarm Hezb...

Israel claimed to have killed Hezbollah’s top military official in an airstrike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Sunday, despite a US-brokered truce a year ago. The strike, the first on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital in months, targeted Hezbollah’s acting chief of staff, Ali Tabtabai, the military claimed in a statement. There was no immediate confirmation of his killing from Hezbollah, although senior Hezbollah official Mahmoud Qmati confirmed a central figure from the group had been targeted. Speaking near the bombed-out building in the Haret Hreik suburb, he said Israel’s strike crossed a “red line”. Qmati said Hezbollah’s leadership would decide on whether and how the group would respond. Five dead in strike The United States imposed sanctions on Tabtabai in 2016, identifying him as a key Hezbollah leader and offering a reward of up to $5 million for information on him. The Israeli military statement claimed Tabtabai “commanded most of Hezbollah’s units and worked hard to restore them to readiness...