The potential successor to slain Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said yesterday, after an Israeli airstrike 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 Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential area and Hizbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.
Hizbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine.
The loss of Nasrallah’s rumoured successor would be another blow to Hizbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hizbollah’s leadership.
Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon yesterday 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.
At least eight strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs late last night including close to the country’s main airport, according to witnesses, after the Israeli military issued warnings to residents of certain buildings in the area.
Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hizbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel had killed 440 Hizbollah fighters in its ground operations in southern Lebanon and destroyed 2,000 Hizbollah targets. Hizbollah has not released any death tolls.
Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hizbollah since last October 8.
The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hizbollah’s senior military leadership, including Nasrallah in an air attack on September 27.
The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people – almost a quarter of the population – to flee.
The Lebanese security official said that yesterday’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 said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing, naming him as Saeed Atallah.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city also targeted during a 2006 war with Hizbollah.
It said in a later statement that it had killed two Hamas members operating in Lebanon, but did not say where they were killed. There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens sent people running for their shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.
Hizbollah said it had fired missiles at what it called “ATA company for military industries near Sakhnin base”, close to the city of Haifa. It was not immediately clear what Hizbollah was referring to.
The Israeli army said two projectiles had crossed from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted while the other landed but caused no damage. The violence came as the anniversary approached of Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly all of the enclave’s population of 2.3m.
Iran, which backs both Hizbollah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that no country would accept an attack on its citizens like Iran’s on Israel. “Israel has the obligation and the right to defend itself and to retaliate against these attacks and that is what we will do,” Netanyahu said.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian oil facilities. US President Joe Biden has urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil infrastructure.
The top US general for the region, Army General Michael “Eric” Kurilla, is travelling in the Middle East, a US defence official said yesterday, declining to specify which country or to confirm Israeli media reports that he had arrived in Israel for consultations with Israeli military officials.
UN officials said most of Lebanon’s nearly 900 shelters were full, voicing concern for tens of thousands of mostly female, live-in domestic workers being “abandoned” by their employers.
About 100 migrant workers and some of their children are staying at the same crowdfunded shelter, sleeping on thin cots on a cement floor and eating on wooden pallets.
Dea Hage-Chahine, who helped lead the project, said she and her team were working around the clock to expand the shelter by adding power generators and a makeshift kitchen.
Their ultimate goal is to help repatriate workers who want to return to their home countries - although most, like Karama, are without a passport.
“For now, for those who told us they want to travel, we initiated the process. For those who want to stay, for now, we have the shelter open for them, providing any needs they require. But we don’t know what’s next,” Hage-Chahine said.
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