The potential successor to Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source told Reuters on Saturday, following an Israeli airstrike that reportedly targeted him.
In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel launched a major attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs late Thursday, targeting Hashem Saffieddin in an underground bunker, Axios said, citing three Israeli officials.
Israeli attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs – known as Dahiyah – since Friday have prevented rescue workers from reaching the site of the attacks, the Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said.
Hezbollah has not yet commented on Saffieddin since the attack.
Israeli Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Friday that the military was still assessing Thursday night’s airstrikes, which he said targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.
The loss of Nasrallah’s putative successor would be another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli attacks across the region last year, which have rapidly intensified over the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon with its first attack on the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs fell in Beirut suburbs and raids by Israeli troops in the south.
Israel has launched an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of fighting with Hezbollah. The fighting was previously mostly confined to the Israel-Lebanon border area, paralleling Israel’s years-long war in Gaza against the Palestinian group Hamas.
Israel says its goal is to allow thousands of civilians in northern Israel, bombed by Hezbollah since October 8 last year, to return safely to their homes.
Israeli strikes killed most of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Secretary General Nasrallah, in an airstrike on September 27.
Lebanese officials say the Israeli strikes have also killed hundreds of civilian Lebanese, including rescue workers, and forced 1.2 million people – about a quarter of the population – to flee their homes.
An attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli on Saturday killed a Hamas member, his wife and two children, a Lebanese security official told Reuters. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group also said the attack killed a leader of its armed wing.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack on the Sunni Muslim-majority port city of Tripoli, which its warplanes also targeted during its 2006 war with Hezbollah.
Meanwhile Israel has carried out nightly bombing raids on Dahiyah, once a bustling and densely populated area of ​​Beirut and a Hezbollah stronghold.
On Saturday, smoke billowed over Dahiyah, reducing much of it to debris, prompting residents to flee to Beirut or other parts of Lebanon.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens forced people to flee for their shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.
Israel is looking for alternatives to Iran
The violence comes close to the anniversary of the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage, according to Israeli data.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, Israel’s subsequent offensive on Gaza killed approximately 42,000 Palestinians and displaced almost the entire population of the enclave’s 2.3 million.
Iran, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes in Syria this year, fired ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The attacks caused little damage.
Israel is considering options in response to Iran’s attack.
The possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities has pushed oil prices higher as Israel pursues its goal of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas affiliates in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to attacking Iranian oil fields, saying he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
The top US general for the Middle East, Army Gen. Michael Kurila, is heading to Israel in the coming days, Israeli news website Ynet reported. Israeli and US officials were not immediately available for comment.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
