Lebanon family 'invited to dinner' finds death in Israel strike

Hussein Barjawi had invited his daughter, her husband and their two young sons to dinner in south Lebanon, but an Israeli strike nearly wiped them all out, an official said Thursday.

A security source said a Hezbollah commander and two fighters from the powerful Lebanese movement were killed in the Israeli strike that targeted a building in the southern city of Nabatiyeh on Wednesday and also killed seven civilians from the same family.

Lebanon's official National News Agency had reported that Hussein Barjawi, his daughters Amani and Zeinab, his sister Fatima and Zeinab's son Mahmud Amer were killed in the strike, while Hussein Amer, a small boy, was pulled alive from the rubble.

The security source later told AFP that Barjawi's wife and niece were also killed.

It was the bloodiest civilian toll from a single strike on Lebanon since cross-border hostilities erupted in October between Israel and the Iran-backed group.

Amin Shomar, a local official in south Lebanon, said Ali Amer, his wife and their two sons, aged three and four, had been "invited over to his father-in-law's house in Nabatiyeh for dinner".

Amer was "badly wounded" in the strike and was taken to hospital, Shomar told AFP, while his wife and son were killed and his other son was pulled from the rubble alive.

Video circulating on social media purportedly showed the rescue of the boy in a blue tracksuit, his face bloody, a mattress among the debris beside him.

An AFP photographer said the ground and first floors of the three-storey residential building were hit, with pieces of furniture strewn among the rubble.

The security source said the Hezbollah fighters were on the ground floor, while the family was on the first.

Israel's military confirmed it had killed a Hezbollah commander, his deputy and another fighter in Wednesday's raid.

A statement said Ali al-Debs and two fighters were killed "in a precise air strike carried out by an IDF (Israeli) aircraft on a Hezbollah military structure in Nabatiyeh".

- Shock at sudden violence -

Schools, universities and local administrative offices in Nabatiyeh were closed on Thursday following the attack.

The Israeli military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group have been trading near daily cross-border fire since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October.

The Lebanese group says it is acting in support of Palestinian ally Hamas with its attacks on Israel.

Fifteen people including five Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli strikes in south Lebanon on Wednesday, and an Israeli soldier was killed by unclaimed rocket fire from Lebanon.

A woman, her child, aged two, and stepchild, 13, in the village of Sawwaneh were among those who died, according to the NNA.

Tarek Mroueh, 35, who works in a pharmaceutical company, expressed shock at the sudden violence that rocked his neighbourhood in Nabatiyeh.

Speaking early on Thursday before the news that a Hezbollah commander had also been in the building, he said he had thought a Hezbollah member's house might have been targeted.

"But then we learnt that it was Hussein Barjawi's building. He's a civilian, not affiliated with any political party," Mroueh said.

Also speaking early Thursday, Mohammed Bdeir, 67, a mechanic whose workshop is nearby, said that "civilians were targeted".

Nabatiyeh had been relatively spared the cross-border violence until February 8 when an Israeli drone strike on a car seriously wounded the Hezbollah commander who was killed in Wednesday's raid.

The cross-border hostilities have resulted in the deaths of at least 259 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 40 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.