IDF confirms killing Hezbollah terror chief Nasrallah in strike on his Beirut bunker
Leader and other commanders of terror group killed in massive airstrikes on underground HQ in southern suburb; other attacks take out Hezbollah’s anti-ship missiles
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders of the terror group were killed in a massive Israeli airstrike on their underground headquarters in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, the Israel Defense Forces announced Saturday morning as Israel sought to dramatically upend the year-long conflict.
Hezbollah confirmed his death several hours later.
The announcement came as the Israeli military ramped up its airstrikes against Hezbollah assets in Beirut and other areas in Lebanon, hours after Nasrallah was struck at the terror group’s main headquarters, leaving parts of the Lebanese capital shrouded in smoke and dust.
Israel has eliminated much of the Hezbollah terror group’s most senior leadership in recent weeks.
In a statement, the IDF said that alongside Nasrallah, the commander of Hezbollah’s so-called Southern Front, Ali Karaki — who survived a recent assassination attempt — was also killed in the Friday afternoon strike, along with other top commanders in the terror group.
Nasrallah was targeted by dozens of bunker-busting bombs dropped by Israeli Force fighter jets while at Hezbollah’s main headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold known as the Dahiyeh.
The headquarters was located underground, beneath residential buildings in the Dahiyeh, the IDF said, later announced that the name of the operation was called “New Order.”
“The strike was carried out while the top brass of Hezbollah were at their headquarters and engaged in coordinating terror activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” the military said.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said the airstrike targeting Nasrallah was based on years of tracking him, along with “real-time intelligence.” He said Israel confirmed the death through various types of intelligence, though he declined to elaborate.
Hezbollah confirmed his death on Saturday afternoon.
“Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
The group said in a statement it would continue its battle against Israel “in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defense of Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people.”
During the morning Hezbollah had resumed rocket fire on northern Israel, as well as firing a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv and long-range rockets at the West Bank.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi after the assassination of Nasrallah said Israel would reach anyone who threatened the country and its citizens.
“The is not the end of the tools in the toolbox. The message is simple, to anyone who threatens the citizens of the State of Israel, we will know how to get to them,” he said.
Shoshani said much of Hezbollah’s arsenal remains intact despite intense Israeli strikes over the past week, and that Israel will continue to target the group.
“This isn’t a threat that has gone away,” he said. Shoshani said it is “safe to assume” that Hezbollah will retaliate.
But he said Israel hopes the blow “will change Hezbollah’s actions” and alter the course of the war.
Nasrallah became secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992 at just 35, the public face of a once shadowy group founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to fight Israel.
His regional influence has been on display over nearly a year of conflict ignited by the Gaza war, as Hezbollah entered the fray by firing on Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas. Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel on October 8th, the day after the Hamas massacre in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Strikes continue
Following the strike on Hezbollah headquarters on Friday night, the IDF called on Lebanese civilians near several buildings in the Dahiyeh to evacuate immediately. According to the military, the sites were used by Hezbollah to store anti-ship missiles.
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, published maps alongside the announcement, which call on civilians to distance themselves at least 500 meters from the buildings,
“You are located near Hezbollah properties, and for your safety and the safety of your loved ones, you are obliged to evacuate the buildings immediately and move away from them to a distance of no less than 500 meters,” Adraee said.
In a press conference late Friday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari warned, “In the coming hours we are going to strike strategic capability that Hezbollah placed underground, under three buildings in the heart of the Dahiyeh.”
“Over the years, Hezbollah built and developed an array of coast-to-sea [missiles], that originate in Iran,” Hagari said, noting the 2006 attack on the INS Hanit, killing four sailors. “Nasrallah himself threatened Israel’s vital and strategic facilities at sea and near the coast.”
“We will now reveal how [Hezbollah] places strategic weapons under civilian buildings in the heart of the Dahiyeh,” he continued.
“These missiles are a real threat to world shipping lanes and strategic facilities of the State of Israel. In a short while, we will attack the weapons under the buildings. The intensity of the explosion of the weapons under the buildings, will lead to damage to the buildings and could lead to their collapse,” Hagari added.
A short while later, the buildings where the anti-ship missiles were stored, along with several other Hezbollah sites in Beirut’s southern suburbs were hit.
According to the military, the strikes took out six warehouses where the coast-to-sea missiles were stored and maintained, destroying dozens of the anti-ship missiles. The missiles could have been used within minutes from the sites, the IDF said.
Hezbollah was known by the IDF to be in possession of the Chinese C-704 and C802 missiles, as well as the Iranian Ghader, which have ranges of up to around 200 kilometers.
They were stored, operated, and maintained by a small elite Hezbollah unit, which the IDF described as very experienced. Members of the shadowy unit who took part in the attack on the Israeli Navy’s INS Hanit in 2006, killing four sailors, are still in service, military sources said.
Strikes continued in Beirut throughout the night, following another evacuation order, with the IDF in the morning saying that it had struck “strategic Hezbollah” sites in the Lebanese capital, including weapon manufacturing facilities, buildings where weapons were stored, and headquarters.
Lebanese grieve Hezbollah chief Nasrallah’s killing in Israeli strike in Beirut, September 28, 2024 (Kemal Mehanna/AFPTV/AFP); Iranians rally to denounce Israel and grieve the death of the Hezbollah leader (Mostafa Dadkhah/AFPTV/AFP); Syrians celebrate at rebel-held Idlib, in northern Syria, after reports of Nasrallah’s death on the night of September 27, 2024. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFPTV/AFP).
Lebanon’s health ministry said that hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs would be evacuated after the heavy Israeli strikes in the area, urging hospitals in unaffected areas to stop admitting non-urgent cases.
A ministry statement called on hospitals unaffected by Israeli strikes to “stop receiving non-emergency cases until the end of next week in order to make space to receive patients from hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs which will be evacuated due to the developments in the aggression”. The health ministry did not immediately provide an updated toll for strikes.
The IDF also said fighter jets struck dozens of targets in the Beqaa Valley and in southern Lebanon overnight and on Saturday morning, including buildings where weapons were stored and rocket launchers aimed at Israel.
“We will continue operating to precisely dismantle Hezbollah’s offensive capabilities. Hezbollah has strategically embedded weapons in civilian areas, putting Lebanese civilians at risk to harm Israeli civilians,” the IDF said in a statement.
“Our war is with Hezbollah, not the people of Lebanon,” the army added, echoing a statement it has used when describing its operations in Gaza — that its devastating war is not with Gazan civilians, but rather Hamas, which carried out the October 7 onslaught.
Also in his Friday night press conference, Hagari warned that the military would not allow any weapon transfers to the Hezbollah terror group, including via Beirut’s international airport.
“We will not allow the transfer of weapons to the Hezbollah terror group, in any way. We know of Iranian weapon transfer to Hezbollah, and we [will] foil them,” he said.
“Air Force planes are now patrolling the Beirut airport area. Until now, Lebanon, contrary to Syria, acted over the years responsibly and did not allow the transfer of weapons through the civilian airport,” Hagari continued.
“We are announcing, we will not allow enemy flights with weapons to land at the civilian airport in Beirut. This is a civilian airport, for civilian use, and it must stay that way,” he added.
Hezbollah rockets and missiles
On Saturday morning, Hezbollah carried out several rocket and missile attacks on Israel, with no injuries reported.
In the first attack, ten rockets were fired from Lebanon at the Upper Galilee. The army said that not all of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.
Meanwhile, a single long-range rocket fired from Lebanon set off sirens in several West Bank settlements, including Beit El, Ofra, Talmon, and Neria.
The IDF said the rocket struck an open area, and according to Palestinian media, shrapnel landed in the town of Huwara, causing damage.
Later in the morning, five rockets fired at northern Israel and set off sirens in numerous towns in the Galilee, Jezreel Valley, and Wadi Ara. The IDF said most of the five rockets were intercepted by air defense.
Another five rockets were launched from Lebanon at the Jezreel Valley, setting off sirens in several towns east of Haifa. The IDF said some of those rockets were intercepted by air defenses.
Some 13 more rockets were fired at the Safed area, some of which were intercepted, according to the military.
Also Saturday, two surface-to-surface missiles were fired from Lebanon, one of which landed in the sea off the coast of Tel Aviv and the second which was shot down by air defenses over northern Israel.
The second incident set off sirens in numerous towns across northern Israel.
There were no reports of injuries or major damage in any of the attacks.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for rocket fire in the morning hours on northern Israel, but the terror group appeared to have missed its intended target.
In a statement, its first on Saturday, the terror group said it launched a barrage of Fadi-1 rockets at Kibbutz Kabri in the Western Galilee. Despite Hezbollah’s claims, no sirens sounded in Kabri before the announcement, and no rockets were headed there.
Meanwhile, the IDF announced early Saturday that a separate recent Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile unit in southern Lebanon and other commanders.
Muhammed Ismail, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile unit in southern Lebanon, his deputy Hussein Ismail, and other commanders were killed in the strike. The military did not detail when or where the strike took place.
The Hezbollah rocket and missile commander was responsible for numerous attacks on Israel amid the war, including Wednesday’s ballistic missile fire at Tel Aviv, according to the IDF.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel since the fighting escalated, causing several injuries and damage to several towns, but far less extensive than initially anticipated.
The IDF in previous years assessed that Hezbollah would potentially be able to launch thousands of rockets per day at the country during a full-scale war, causing hundreds of casualties. But in the past 11 months of fighting on the northern border, Hezbollah’s capabilities were slowly “peeled” away, according to the military.
Before the assassination of Nasrallah, the IDF said that in the past 10 days, since diverting its focus to Lebanon, it had made significant achievements, including killing top Hezbollah commanders, eliminating the leadership of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, and striking thousands of sites where Hezbollah stored arms.
But the IDF stressed on Friday, hours before the strike on Beirut, that “there is still more work to be done, and we cannot stop here.”
Also on Friday, the IDF said it had completed the mobilization of two reserve brigades — the Etzioni and Alon brigades — that were sent to northern Israel to bolster troops there, amid the possibility of a ground offensive.
Since October 8, 2023 — just a day after Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200 and abducting 251 — Hezbollah has been attacking Israeli communities and military posts along the border in solidarity with the Palestinian terror group, which is also sponsored by Iran.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
After more than 11 months of cross-border violence that skirted all-out war, the fighting has ramped up in recent days, with hundreds of rockets fired at Israel and intensive IDF airstrikes on Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, as well as the targeted strikes that have killed a number of the terror group’s leaders.
The fighting escalated after last week, Israel’s security cabinet updated its official goals for the ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza to include the objective of allowing residents of the north to return safely to their homes after being displaced by attacks by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah had named 513 members killed during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 88 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians had also been killed. These numbers have not been consistently updated since Israel began its new offensive this week.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
