IDF bombs Beirut for 6th consecutive day

Mohammed Afif, Hezbollah's media relations chief, was killed in an Israeli strike Sunday, Hezbollah confirmed.

The strike on central Beirut partially collapsed a building and injured three others, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

The Israel Defense Forces also confirmed Afif's death. In a statement, the IDF said he joined Hezbollah in the 1980s and went on to become a "central and veteran figure in the organization who greatly influenced Hezbollah's military activity."

Citing one particular incident, the statement claimed that he had played a key role in the drone attack on Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's home in Caesarea in October.

-ABC News' Will Gretsky

Pope Francis, in an upcoming book to be released ahead of his 2025 jubilee, called for an investigation to determine whether Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide, according to the Vatican.

"In the Middle East, where the open doors of nations like Jordan or Lebanon continue to be a salvation for millions of people fleeing conflicts in the region: I am thinking above all of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters given the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory," he wrote in a passage released by the Vatican.

"According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide," the pope wrote. "It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies."

-ABC News' Victoria Beaulé

Israeli warplanes launched "a wave of attacks" on Hezbollah targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut early Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said in a post to X.

The strikes targeted "military headquarters and other terrorist infrastructures of Hezbollah in the Dahiya area in Beirut," the IDF wrote, referring to the southern area of the capital known as a Hezbollah stronghold.

Sunday marked the sixth consecutive day of Israeli airstrikes on the capital.

Israel Defense Forces attacks in different areas of Gaza overnight and into Sunday morning killed 96 Palestinians and wounded 60 more, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said Sunday.

Gaza authorities reported Israeli strikes in Beit Lahiya, Nuseirat and Bureij in the north of the strip, as well as other attacks in the central portion of the territory.

The targets of the strikes are not yet clear and the IDF is yet to comment.

At least 72 of those killed were displaced people sheltering in houses in Beit Lahiya, officials said.

The Gaza government media office alleged that the IDF knew the targeted residential buildings were housing dozens of displaced civilians, and that the majority of them were children and women forced to flee civilian residential neighborhoods.

-ABC News' Samy Zyara and Somayeh Malekian