Iran parliament speaker visits site of deadliest Israeli strike in central Beirut

Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Saturday visited the site of the deadliest Israeli strike on central Beirut in recent weeks, accompanied by two Hezbollah lawmakers, an AFP photographer said.

A source close to Hezbollah has said that the air raid on Thursday night in the densely populated Basta area, which killed at least 22 people, had targeted the Iran-backed group's security chief Wafiq Safa, but his fate remains unknown.

  Hezbollah on Friday dismissed as a “pure fiction” a report published by Reuters news agency claiming that the Lebanese resistance group has allegedly “forged” a new command for the ground battles in south Lebanon after the assassination of its top leaders.

“Reuters news agency has published a report on what it called a new military command directing the Israeli ground offensive in south Lebanon and on some details related to this war, its nature, plans and weapons,” Hezbollah Media Relations announced in a statement.

“This report is not but a pure fiction imagined by Reuters’ writers, journalists and security advisers,” the statement read.

“What the agency has attributed to a so-called field commander is totally false, and our policy, as it has become well known, though it’s necessary to reiterate: There is nothing called Hezbollah sources,” it added.

“Moreover, there is nothing in Hezbollah, called field commander who offers such dangerous information, allegedly attributed to him,” Hezbollah’s Media Relations Office concluded.