Hezbollah top official Nabil Qaouq killed in Israeli airstrike south of Beirut

Israel said Sunday it killed another senior Hezbollah official in an airstrike a day earlier after dealing the Iran-backed group a seismic blow by assassinating its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel announced the killing of Nabil Qaouq, a member of Hezbollah's central council, in a strike on Chiyah, just south of Beirut on Saturday.

Hezbollah officially announced Qaouq's death in a statement later on Sunday.

Israeli strikes have in recent months decimated Hezbollah's senior command structure, with Nasrallah's right-hand man Fouad Shukr, head of the elite Radwan Force Ibrahim Aqil, and others among the dead.

The past week's waves of air strikes across Lebanon have also plunged the small Mediterranean country and the wider region into fear of even more violence to come.

Hezbollah launched low-intensity cross-border strikes on Israel after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, sparking the war in the Gaza Strip. Hamas says its attack was in response to Israel's ongoing brutal occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people, including the Gaza blockade.

Nearly a year later, Israel announced a shift in its focus to battling Hezbollah on its northern front.

Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah's killing in a massive strike on Friday on the group's main bastion in the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut.

"I can't describe my shock at this announcement... we all started crying," Maha Karit told AFP in Beirut after Nasrallah's death.

With Lebanon already mired in political and economic crisis, the escalation has pushed it to the brink, as the bombardment has killed over 700 people in a week, according to health ministry figures.

The Israeli military claimed on Sunday its air force had struck "dozens of Hezbollah terror targets" after carrying out "hundreds" of strikes on Friday and Saturday.

It then announced that Qaouq was "struck and eliminated" in a strike on Chiyah, south of Beirut on Saturday.

Lebanon's National News Agency reported a string of raids in and around the city of Baalbek in the eastern Beqaa region.

Lebanese media reported 17 killed from one family in the village of Zboud, north of Baalbek.

At least six people were killed in a strike on a house in the Hermel district also north of Baalbek, the agency reported.

An emergency response group affiliated with the Shia Amal movement said five of its rescuers were killed in the south.

Hezbollah said its fighters launched "a volley of Fadi-1" rockets at an Israeli base in the Golan Heights early Sunday.

The Israeli military reported "approximately eight" launches from Lebanon that fell in unpopulated areas near the Israeli-annexed territory.