Nasrallah’s body retrieved from ruins as IDF names 20 more terrorists killed in blast

Other slain Hezbollah officials include Southern Front commander, who had survived assassination attempt last week, as well as closest allies of terror group’s slain leader

By Emanuel Fabian,
Reuters and ToI Staff 29 September 2024, 5:13 pm Edit
Footage shows the site of the Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and other terror chiefs in Beirut (STRINGER/AFPTV/AFP), and Lebanese newspaper front pages dedicated to Nasrallah's death, September 29, 2024. (Mohamed Abouelenen/AFPTV/AFP)

The body of Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah was recovered from the site of an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, a medical source and a security source told Reuters.

Hezbollah’s statement on Saturday confirming Nasrallah’s death did not say how exactly he was killed nor when his funeral would be.

But the two sources said his body had no direct wounds and that it appeared the cause of death was blunt trauma from the force of the blast.

A short clip circulated later by Lebanese media outlets purported to show the moment the body was recovered from the terror group’s underground headquarters in Beirut.

Alongside the leader of the Iran-backed terror group, more than 20 Hezbollah operatives were killed in the massive airstrike in Beirut, the Israel Defense Forces said Sunday.

According to the military, among those killed at Hezbollah’s underground headquarters on Friday in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut were:

  • Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front.
  • Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, head of Nasrallah’s personal security unit.
  • Samir Tawfiq Deeb, an advisor to Nasrallah.
  • Abd al-Amir Muhammad Sablini, responsible for Hezbollah’s force build-up.
  • Ali Nayef Ayoub, responsible for Hezbollah’s firepower.

The IDF said that Jazini and Deeb were among the closest people to Nasrallah, and as such were “a significant source of knowledge regarding the ongoing functioning of the Hezbollah terror organization and Nasrallah in particular.”

Hezbollah on Sunday confirmed that Karaki, who was responsible for the terror group’s military activity in south Lebanon, had been killed in the massive strike on Friday. Karaki had survived an Israeli assassination attempt earlier last week.

Following the announcement of Karaki’s death, a purported image of the commander circulated on social media.

Additionally, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, Abbas Nilforoushan, was killed in the strike.

Nasrallah, the Hezbollah commanders and the IRGC official had been gathered in the terror group’s main underground command center in Beirut when they were struck.

The IDF said the site was located beneath residential buildings, close to a United Nations-run school.

Dozens of bunker-busting bombs were dropped by Israeli Air Force F-15I fighter jets on the underground headquarters in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut in the attack, according to the military.

F-15I fighter jets of the IAF’s 69th Squadron are seen at Hatzerim Airbase in southern Israel before a strike in Beirut against Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, September 27, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

Meanwhile, senior Hezbollah official Nabil Qaouk was killed in an IDF airstrike on Saturday in the Dahiyeh, the military announced on Sunday morning. Hezbollah also confirmed his death.

Since Israel escalated its airstrikes on Hezbollah on Monday, more than 630 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry.

At least a quarter of those killed have been women and children, according to Lebanese health officials. More than 2,000 were wounded. Israel has said that many Hezbollah operatives are among the dead, and that many civilians have been killed since the terror group has been using them as human shields, embedding its infrastructure among them.

A spokesman for the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Saturday that the total number of displaced people in Lebanon had reached 211,319, including 118,000 just since the recent escalation.

The remainder had fled their homes since Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border attacks one day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, triggering the war in the Gaza Strip.

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