The potential successor to slain Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli air strike that is reported to have targeted him.
In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.
The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said that ongoing Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburb – known as Dahiyeh – since Friday have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.
Hizbullah has made no comment so far on Safieddine since the attack.
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Israeli lieutenant colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday the military was still assessing the Thursday night air strikes, which he said targeted Hizbullah’s intelligence headquarters.
The loss of Nasrallah’s rumoured successor would be yet another blow to Hizbullah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hizbullah’s leadership.
Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.
Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hizbullah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.
Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hizbullah since October 8th last year.
The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hizbullah’s senior military leadership, including secretary general Nasrallah in an air attack on September 27th.
The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, including rescue workers, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people – almost a quarter of the population – to flee their homes.
The Lebanese security official said that Saturday’s strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group also said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city that its warplanes also targeted during a 2006 war with Hizbullah.
Israel has meanwhile staged nightly bombardment of Dahiyeh, once a bustling and densely populated area of Beirut and a stronghold for Hizbullah.
On Saturday, smoke billowed over Dahiyeh, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble sending residents fleeing to other parts of Beirut or of Lebanon.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens sent people running for their shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.
The violence comes as the anniversary approaches of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7th, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s ministry for health, and displaced nearly all of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million.
Iran, which backs both Hizbullah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes in Syria this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did little damage.
Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran’s attack.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hizbullah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
[ As October 7th anniversary nears, perhaps horror is the new status quoOpens in new window ]
US president Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oilfields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
Israeli news website Ynet reported that the top US general for the Middle East, army general Michael Kurilla, is headed for Israel in the coming day. Israeli and US officials were not immediately reachable for comment. – Reuters
