Nasrallah’s presumed successor said to be target of heavy Israeli strike in Beirut
Security officials said increasingly confident he was killed; NYT says he was meeting other leaders in underground bunker; IDF: Strike targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence HQ
Israel reportedly targeted the presumed successor to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a heavy airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs around midnight Thursday, just under a week after the head of the Iran-backed terror group was killed in an Israeli attack.
Both the Axios news site and The New York Times identified Hashem Safieddine as the target of the strike, with the latter outlet citing three Israeli officials saying he was attending a meeting with other senior Hezbollah leaders in an underground bunker.
It was unclear if Safieddine was harmed in the strike, but Channel 12 reported Friday night that security officials were increasingly confident he had been killed.
The IDF said Friday morning that the airstrike in Beirut targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters. The military did not disclose who was at the underground bunker.
There was no immediate reaction from Hezbollah.
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. Safieddine’s family ties and physical resemblance to Nasrallah, as well as his religious status as a descendant of Mohammed, would all count in his favor to succeed the slain arch-terrorist.
He was reportedly targeted amid renewed air raids in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh after Israel ordered people to leave their homes in parts of the district.
“Israel struck the southern suburbs 11 consecutive times,” a source close to Hezbollah said on condition of anonymity.
AFP correspondents in the capital and beyond heard loud bangs that made car alarms go off and buildings shake. About an hour later, AFP journalists heard several explosions coming from the direction of the southern suburbs after the IDF ordered residents of the Hadath neighborhood to evacuate.
AFP footage showed giant balls of flame rising from the targeted site with thick smoke billowing and flares shooting out.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said “more than 10 consecutive strikes have been recorded so far, in one of the strongest raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli war on Lebanon.”
The strikes echoed to mountain regions outside Beirut, the NNA said.
Earlier Thursday, IDF Arabic-language spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee had issued an “urgent warning” for residents of the south Beirut area of Burj al-Barajneh to evacuate along with maps of the area. He later issued the evacuation order for Hadath.
“You are located near facilities and interests belonging to Hezbollah, and the IDF will work against them in the near future,” he said in a statement on X.
Earlier in the evening, a source close to Hezbollah said another Israeli strike had targeted a warehouse next to Beirut airport, which borders Dahiyeh.
“An Israeli airstrike targeted a warehouse adjacent to the airport,” the source told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. It was unclear what the warehouse contained.
And early Friday, the IDF said it had intercepted “a hostile aircraft” that set off alarms in the Beit She’an valley in northeast Israel.
According to the IDF, the aircraft had entered the territory from “the east” — a term the army has previously used to refer to attacks by Iraq-based militias which, like Hezbollah, belong to the “Axis of Resistance” network of Iran’s regional proxies.
The strike said to target Safieddine came as the army broadened its ground operation in south Lebanon on Thursday and also conducted waves of airstrikes at Hezbollah targets, including eliminating a top commander responsible for killing 12 children in a rocket strike on Israel earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, the Iran-backed group fired more than 200 rockets into northern Israel.
Israel has in the past two weeks stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Amid the escalation, Israel has all but decimated the terror group’s top command in a series of massive airstrikes on Beirut and southern Lebanon.
The escalation followed Israel’s decision last month to make the return home of northern residents an official war aim.
Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s onslaught on October 7, out of fear Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack.
The onslaught saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, and — excluding the soldiers killed in the ground operation — the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
The IDF has announced the deaths of nine soldiers in the ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The military has described the operations as “limited, localized and targeted raids,” with the goal of demolishing Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the border area. Officials have said that the military intends for the operations to end as quickly as possible.
Since Israel escalated its airstrikes on the Hezbollah terror group 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.