BEIRUT: Lebanon's health minister said Saturday that the death toll from the Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb the day before has risen to 31, including seven women and three children.

Firass Abiad told reporters that 68 people were also wounded of whom 15 remain in hospital, in the deadliest Israeli airstrike on Beirut since the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

The death toll included Ibrahim Akil, a Hezbollah commander who was in charge of the group's elite Radwan Forces, as well as about a dozen members of the militant group who were meeting in the basement of the building that was destroyed.

Israel launched the rare airstrike in the densely populated southern Beirut neighbourhood on Friday afternoon during rush hour as people returned home from work and students from schools. On Saturday morning, Hezbollah's media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the airstrike where workers were still digging through the rubble.

Lebanese troops cordoned off the area preventing people from reaching the building that was knocked down as members of the Lebanese Red Cross stood nearby to take any recovered body from under the rubble.