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In the latest devastating blow to the Lebanese militant group, the Israeli military said it had killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a major attack on Beirut.
The airstrikes south of Beirut were part of heavy bombing carried out by the Israeli military over the past 24 hours, with fighter jets bombing numerous facilities in a series of attacks in southern and eastern Lebanon.
This ended a dramatic escalation in Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, severely damaging the Iranian-backed militant group’s capabilities and bringing year-long hostilities between the two countries on the verge of erupting into all-out war. This stirred anxiety. .
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Helj Halevi said on Saturday that the attack does not signal the end of Israeli aggression. “This is not the end of our toolbox,” he said. “The message is simple: Whoever threatens the Israeli people, we know how to contact them.”
Hezbollah did not immediately comment on an Israeli statement claiming that the Beirut attack also killed Ali Karaki, head of Hezbollah’s southern front, and other senior commanders.
But if Nasrallah’s death is confirmed, it would be the heaviest blow to the Iranian-backed militant group in its 40-year existence.
Nasrallah, a cleric from a Shiite family from Beirut, took control of Hezbollah in 1992 and became an increasingly important figure in Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance. His role in the militant alliance reached its apogee after the US assassinated Iran’s most powerful commander, Qasem Soleimani, in 2020.
His death raises questions about the future of Hezbollah, the Islamist revolutionary group founded by Iran during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s, and threatens to plunge Lebanon into chaos.
During his tenure, Nasrallah oversaw Hezbollah’s growth to become the country’s premier political force and a de facto state within a state.
The attack on Beirut came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday at the United Nations in New York that Israel “must defeat” Hezbollah, despite international pressure for a ceasefire.
Over the past two weeks, Israel has escalated its attacks on militants, killing senior commanders one after another. This week, it began heavy shelling across Lebanon, killing more than 600 people and displacing more than 90,000.
On Wednesday, Israel called up two reserve brigades for an “operational mission” in the country’s north, and Mr. Halevi instructed the military to prepare for a possible ground attack in Lebanon.
After warning civilians in some populated areas to evacuate, the Israeli military continued its shelling on Saturday, carrying out “massive” bombing raids in the Bekaa Valley in the country’s east, as well as further targets in Beirut. announced that they would attack.
