Israel announced that it had killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
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The Israeli military says it has killed Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a major attack on Beirut, the latest devastating blow to the Lebanese militant group.
The attack on a densely populated residential area in south Beirut was part of intense bombardment carried out by Israeli forces over the past 24 hours. The country’s warplanes bombed many locations in a wave of attacks in southern and eastern Lebanon that escalated sharply. Israeli attack against Hizbollah.
The attack has severely damaged the Iran-backed militant group’s capabilities and raised fears that the years-long hostility between the two sides is at risk of erupting into all-out war.
Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said Saturday that the attack did not mark the end of Israel’s offensive. “This is not the end of our toolbox,” he said. “The message is simple: anyone who threatens Israeli citizens – we will know how to reach them.”
Hizbollah did not immediately comment on the Israeli announcement. Israel claimed the strike also killed Hizbollah’s southern front head, Ali Karaki, and other senior commanders. This is the latest in a series of debilitating Israeli attacks targeting Hizbollah’s command system.
If confirmed, Nasrallah’s death would end a disastrous two weeks for Hizbollah, during which the group suffered the heaviest successive blows in its four decades of existence.
A cleric from a Shia family from Beirut, Nasrallah took control of Hizbollah in 1992 and became an increasingly important figure in Iran’s so-called axis of resistance. His role in the coalition of militant groups became more prominent after the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful commander, in 2020.
His death will cast doubt on the future of Hizbollah, an Islamic revolutionary group founded by Iran during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s and which threatens to plunge Lebanon into chaos.
Nasrallah oversaw Hizbollah’s rise to become the supreme political force in the country and a virtual state within a state.
The attack on Beirut comes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday at the United Nations in New York that Israel “must defeat” Hizbollah despite international pressure for a ceasefire.
Residents of Beirut said Israeli bombing attacks on Friday night and in the early hours of Saturday were among the most intense attacks in the city since Israel and Hizbollah fought a long war. 34 days in 2006.
The explosions lit up the sky throughout the night and threw huge clouds of dust into the air. Hundreds of people fled south of the city, where Hizbollah is entrenched, to seek shelter on beaches and public squares.
Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli army, said Israel hopes Nasrallah’s killing will “change Hizbollah’s actions” and allow 60,000 Israeli citizens displaced by the fighting to return to their homes in the north country.
“Hizbollah started this war on October 8 and has been shooting at us since then,” he said in a conference call with reporters. “We are trying to change reality to ensure the safety of civilians [to return].”
Over the past two weeks, Israel has escalated its offensive against the militant group, killing a series of its senior commanders. This week, it began heavy bombing of sites across Lebanon, killing more than 600 people and displacing more than 90,000.
On Wednesday, Israel called up two reserve brigades for “combat missions” in the north of the country, with Halevi asking the army to prepare for a possible ground offensive in Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it continued its bombing on Saturday, carrying out “widespread” bombing raids on the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon as well as hitting other targets in Beirut, after warnings reported that civilians in some crowded residential areas had to evacuate.
