Nasrallah’s possible successor out of contact since Israeli strike said to target him
Lebanese officials tell Al Jazeera Israel is refusing to allow rescue teams to approach site of strike that may have killed Hashem Safieddine
BEIRUT — The potential successor to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike that is reported to have targeted him.
In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Thursday, which, according to Israeli officials cited by Axios, targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.
The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said that ongoing Israeli strikes on Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold since Friday have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.
Al Jazeera reported Saturday, citing unnamed Lebanese security sources, that there were international mediation efforts to enable rescue teams to search the site, but that Israel was so far refusing to allow them to enter.
Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine since the attack.
Channel 12 reported Friday night that security officials were increasingly confident he had been killed.
The IDF said on Friday it was still assessing the Thursday night airstrikes, which it said targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.
As head of the executive council, Safieddine oversees Hezbollah’s political affairs. He also sits on the Jihad Council, which manages the group’s military operations.
Safieddine, whom the US State Department designated as a terrorist in 2017, is a cousin of Nasrallah and, like him, is a cleric who wears the black turban denoting ostensible descent from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.
The loss of Nasrallah’s rumored successor would be yet another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes in the past few weeks have decimated Hezbollah’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 terror targets in Beirut’s 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 Hezbollah attacks on the country’s north. 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 terror group Hamas.
Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of displaced citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hezbollah since October 8 last year, with the terror group saying it is doing so in support of Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Secretary General Nasrallah in an air attack on September 27.
Lebanese officials say the Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, including rescue workers, and forced 1.2 million people — almost a quarter of the population — to flee their homes. Israel says it is hitting Hezbollah targets embedded within the civilian population while making efforts to avoid harm to innocents. It has routinely warned civilians to evacuate and move away from Hezbollah facilities ahead of strikes.
The Lebanese security official told Reuters 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.
Israel has meanwhile staged nightly strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, once a bustling and densely populated area of Beirut and a stronghold for Hezbollah.
On Saturday, smoke billowed over Dahiyeh, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble, sending residents fleeing to other parts of Beirut or 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’s brutal attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and in which 251 people were taken as hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says some 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Iran, which backs both Hezbollah 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 Hezbollah in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
The top US general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, was headed for Israel in the coming day, according to Israeli military sources.