Hezbollah spokesman Mohammad Afif was killed Sunday in a rare Israeli airstrike targeting the center of the capital Beirut -- outside Hezbollah's traditional strongholds of Dahieh, the south and the Bekaa, a Hezbollah official said.

The strike -- in the Ras al-Nabaa area near Sodeco Square -- targeted a building containing the headquarters of the Lebanese branch of the Baath Party that rules Syria. A Baath member who survived the strike said the building also contained an apartment housing displaced Lebanese.