BEIRUT – Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s potential successor has remained unreachable since Friday, a Lebanese security source said Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike reportedly targeted him.
As part of its campaign against the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group, Israel carried out heavy bombings on the southern suburbs of Beirut late Thursday – attacks that Israeli officials cited by Axios said were aimed at Hachem Safieddine who had taken refuge in an underground bunker.
This Lebanese security source – and two other sources – said ongoing IDF strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area known as Dahiyeh, have prevented rescue workers from reaching the area. the site of the attack.
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SATURDAY, Al Jazeera announced, citing security sources in Lebanon who spoke on condition of anonymity, that international mediation efforts were underway to allow rescue teams to search the site, adding that Israel had refused until ‘now let them in.
Hezbollah has not made any comments regarding Safieddine since the bombing.
N12 television reported late Friday that security officials were increasingly convinced that the man had indeed been killed.
The Israeli army stressed on Friday that it continued to examine the strikes which took place Thursday evening and which, according to it, targeted the headquarters of Hezbollah’s intelligence services.
Flames rise following Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, October 4, 2024. (Hussein Malla/AP)
As head of the organization’s Executive Council, Safieddine oversees Hezbollah’s political affairs. He also serves on the Jihad Council, which oversees the group’s military operations.
Safieddine, whom the US State Department placed on its terrorism blacklist in 2017, is a cousin of Nasrallah and, like him, a cleric. He wears the black turban indicating that he is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
The death of Nasrallah’s presumed successor would be a new blow for Hezbollah and for its protector, Iran. Israeli strikes in recent weeks have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel widened its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after other bombs hit terrorist targets in Beirut’s suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south of the country.
Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, October 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Israel has launched an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon in recent weeks, sending troops across the border, after almost a year of Hezbollah attacks in the north of the country. Until now, the clashes have been mainly limited to the border area which separates Israel and Lebanon – in parallel with the war that Israel has been waging for a year in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Israel says it wants to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of displaced people to their homes in northern Israel – a region that has been bombed by Hezbollah since October 8 last year, with the terror group saying its strikes come to support Hamas, battling the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli attacks have eliminated the majority of Hezbollah’s senior military leaders – including the organization’s secretary general, Nasrallah, who was killed in an airstrike on September 27.
Workers hang billboards bearing the portrait of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah along the airport highway in Beirut, October 4, 2024. (Credit: Fadel ITANI / AFP)
Lebanese authorities say the Israeli attacks also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians – including rescue workers – and forced 1.2 million people, almost a quarter of the population, to flee their homes. . Israel claims to target Hezbollah infrastructure, cells and other equipment hidden among the civilian population, while striving to avoid harming innocent people. The Jewish state regularly issues warnings to residents to evacuate and move away from Hezbollah facilities ahead of strikes.
The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a Hamas member, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian terror group also claimed the attack killed a leader of its armed wing.
The Israeli army has not commented on the strike in Tripoli, a port city with a Sunni Muslim majority.
In the meantime, Israel carried out nightly bombings on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, which was once a bustling, densely populated neighborhood of Beirut and especially a Hezbollah stronghold.
Damaged buildings at the site where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was eliminated, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, September 29, 2024. (Hassan Ammar/AP)
On Saturday, smoke rose above Dahiyeh – a suburb of which large parts were completely destroyed, pushing residents to flee to other districts of Beirut or elsewhere in Lebanon.
In northern Israel, rocket warning sirens were activated and residents fled to their shelters as projectiles were fired from Lebanon.
This violence comes as the anniversary of the pogrom committed by Hamas in southern Israel approaches, on October 7, 2023. The armed men massacred nearly 1,200 people and 251 people were kidnapped, taken hostage in the gang.
Gaza’s health ministry, which is under Hamas’s authority, says around 42,000 people have been killed or presumed dead in the fighting so far – an unverifiable toll and figures that make no distinction. between civilians and armed men. Israel, for its part, declared, in August, to have killed approximately 17,000 fighters in addition to more than a thousand armed men inside Israel on October 7.
Israel emphasizes that it seeks to minimize the number of civilian casualties, recalling that Hamas uses civilians in Gaza as human shields, launching its attacks from civilian areas – notably from homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
Iran, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas and has lost top commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps following Israeli airstrikes this year , in Syria, fired ballistic missiles towards the Jewish state on Tuesday. An attack that did little damage. Israel is currently examining possible response options.
Oil prices have risen due to the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities, as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah in Lebanon and eliminating its Hamas allies in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he believed Israel had not yet decided how to respond to Iran.
According to Israeli military sources, the top US general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, was expected to visit Israel later today.
