Israel Says Killed Nasrallah’s Apparent Successor In Beirut Strike

Israel’s army said it had killed the cleric tipped to succeed slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut three weeks ago that targeted commanders of the Iran-backed militant group.

Hezbollah has not issued a statement about the Israeli claims to have killed Hashem Safieddine.

“It can now be confirmed that in an attack approximately three weeks ago, Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, and Ali Hussein Hazima, the head of Hezbollah’s Intelligence Directorate, were killed along with other Hezbollah commanders,” the Israeli army said in a statement Tuesday.

The army said the air force had hit Hezbollah’s main intelligence headquarters in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in the Lebanese capital, and that more than 25 Hezbollah militants were present at the time.

Longtime Hezbollah leader Nasrallah was killed on September 27 in an Israeli air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Safieddine, tipped to succeed his distant cousin as leader of the Lebanon-based group, had been out of contact since Israeli strikes on Beirut weeks ago, a high-level Hezbollah source said at the time.

“We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership”, Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement after the confirmation of Safieddine’s death.

After nearly a year of war with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon in late September, vowing to secure its northern border threatened by cross-border fire from Hamas’s Lebanese ally.

Israel ramped up its air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around the country and sent in ground troops late last month, in a war that has killed at least 1,552 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.

People dance and wave Israeli national flags as they celebrate the news of the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, in the Israeli costal city of Netanya, on October 17, 2024. – Israel said on October 17 its forces killed Sinwar, accused of masterminding the October 7, 2023 attack, calling it a “heavy blow” to the Palestinian group it has been fighting for more than a year. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP)

Blinken presses for Gaza aid 

Israel’s announcement of the death of Safieddine came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seize on the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza last week to work towards a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

Blinken is on his 11th trip to the Middle East since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, and his first since Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah escalated in late September.

During his meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Blinken “underscored the need to capitalise” on the death of Sinwar, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Lebanese army soldiers stand by as people clear debris and rubble from the site of a previous Israeli air strike on the village of Aito in northern Lebanon on October 15, 2024. – The Lebanese Red Cross said at least 18 people died in a strike on north Lebanon on October 14, with the health ministry and official media reporting an Israeli raid on the Christian-majority area far from Hezbollah strongholds. (Photo by JOSEPH EID / AFP)

This would be done by “securing the release of all hostages and ending the conflict in Gaza in a way that provides lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians alike”, he added.

Netanyahu told Blinken that Sinwar’s death “could have a positive impact on the return of the hostages” seized by Hamas during the October 7 attack last year, according to a statement from the Israeli leader’s office.

Blinken also pressed for more aid to be allowed into besieged Gaza as concerns rise for tens of thousands of civilians trapped by fighting in the hard-to-reach north.

Blinken later met with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who said they discussed the army’s “achievements in its mission to destroy Hezbollah’s attack infrastructure”.

A picture shows the damage a day after an Israeli airstrike targeted the marketplace of the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh on October 13, 2024. – Israeli warplanes hit a marketplace in the southern city of Nabatiyeh on October 12, and then a 100-year-old mosque in a village near the border on Sunday, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA). (Photo by Abbas FAKIH / AFP)

In a post on X, Gallant said he had “emphasized the importance of standing together against Iranian aggression — amplifying deterrence across the region”.

Gallant told Blinken Israel expects Washington’s support “following our attack on Iran”, his office said earlier.

Israel is weighing its response to Iran’s October 1 missile attack, which Tehran launched in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah in Beirut and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Previous US efforts to end the Gaza war and contain the regional fallout have failed, as did a bid spearheaded by President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to secure a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon.

After Israel, Blinken will visit Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, a US official said.

South Beirut evacuation orders 

Fighting meanwhile raged in Lebanon, with the Israeli military again striking the southern suburbs of Beirut Tuesday evening, after issuing new calls for residents to evacuate the area.

On Tuesday, an Israeli strike on the eastern Hermel region killed five people, while five more died from a separate strike in the southern city of Nabatiyeh, the Lebanese health ministry said.

A man, women, and children sit in the courtyard of the Azariyeh building complex in central Beirut, where people displaced by conflict from southern Lebanon are sheltering, on October 15, 2024. – Israel expanded operations in Lebanon nearly a year after Hezbollah began exchanging fire in support of its ally, Hamas, following the Palestinian group’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. (Photo by AFP)

An Israeli air strike near a Beirut hospital killed 18 people, four of them children, according to the ministry.

The strike flattened four buildings near the Rafic Hariri Hospital, Lebanon’s biggest public health facility which is outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, an AFP correspondent reported.

Resident Ola Eid said she was tossing children chocolate and candy from her balcony when her neighbourhood was bombed.

“Before they could even catch them, the first strike hit, then a second. I saw the children ripped apart,” she told AFP.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said he was “appalled” by the strike.

Hezbollah also continued to fire into Israel through Tuesday, launching about 140 “projectiles” from Lebanon, the Israeli military said.

Volunteers with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent helps people fleeing Israeli bombardment in Lebanon as they walk across a crater caused by an Israeli strike, in the area of Masnaa on the Lebanese side of the border crossing with Syria, on October 15, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (Photo by Maher AL MOUNES / AFP)

‘Bodies lying on the streets’

In the Gaza Strip, Israel launched a major air and ground assault in northern Gaza this month, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in the area.

Despite the exodus of tens of thousands of civilians, around 400,000 have been trapped by the fighting, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned last week.

The only medical facility still partially functioning in the targeted area of northern Gaza has “no medicine or medical supplies”, warned Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hossam Abu Safia.

Iranians lift the flag of Hezbollah and a portrait of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah during an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, on October 8, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

“People are being killed in the streets, and we can’t help them. Bodies are lying on the streets.”

The war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 42,718 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the UN considers reliable.

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