Israel’s military said on Sunday its air strike on Beirut that killed Hassan Nasrallah also “eliminated” another 20 Hezbollah members, as its forces kept pounding Lebanon.
It said “more than 20 other terrorists of varying ranks” were present when Friday’s air strike killed Nasrallah, an attack that dealt the Iran-backed armed group a seismic blow.
Israel also said Nabil Qaouq, a member of Hezbollah’s central council, was killed in a strike on Saturday, adding that jets continued to hit “dozens” of targets around Lebanon.
In one attack which Israel called a “precise strike” in Hezbollah’s southern Beirut bastion, a witness told AFP a rocket hit a building which collapsed instantly.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP the target had been Abu Ali Rida, a commander of one of the group’s sectors in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah later said Rida was “fine”.
Israeli air strikes have decimated Hezbollah’s senior command structure, with Nasrallah’s right-hand man Fuad Shukr, head of the elite Radwan Force Ibrahim Aqil and others among the dead.
A Hezbollah statement on Sunday confirmed that the group’s top commander in south Lebanon, Ali Karake, had also been killed on Friday.
The past week’s waves of strikes targeting Hezbollah have intensified fears in Lebanon and the wider region of more violence to come.
Hezbollah launched low-intensity cross-border strikes on Israeli troops after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel last October 7, sparking war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Nearly a year later, Israel announced a shift in its focus to battling Hezbollah on its northern front.
Hezbollah, a powerful political, military and social force in Lebanon, confirmed Nasrallah’s killing in the massive strike on the group’s main bastion in south Beirut.
“We all started crying,” Maha Karit told AFP in the Lebanese capital after Nasrallah’s death.
With Lebanon already mired in political and economic crisis, the escalation has pushed it to the brink.
Israeli bombardment has killed more than 700 people in a week, including 14 paramedics over a two-day period, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Most of the deaths came last Monday, the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.
Israel’s military said Sunday its aircraft had hit “dozens of Hezbollah terror targets” after “hundreds” of strikes on Friday and Saturday.
AFPTV live images showed grey smoke rising beyond palm trees in the coastal city of Tyre, and more smoke further away across a bay.
It said Qaouq was “eliminated” in south Beirut on Saturday. Hezbollah has yet to officially announce his death, but a source close to the group said he had been killed.
Hezbollah said it had again fired rockets on the northern Israeli town of Safed.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported a series of raids in and around the city of Baalbek in Lebanon’s east.
At least six people were killed in a strike on a house in the northeastern Hermel region, it reported.
Hezbollah said its fighters fired “a volley of Fadi-1” rockets at an Israeli base in the Golan Heights early Sunday. Israel reported “approximately eight” launches from Lebanon that fell in unpopulated areas near the Israeli-annexed territory.
– Cult status –
Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah, enjoying cult status among his supporters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had “settled the score” with his killing, and Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the world was “a safer place” without him.
US President Joe Biden — whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier — said it was a “measure of justice for his many victims”.
Analysts told AFP Nasrallah’s death leaves a bruised Hezbollah under pressure to respond.
“Either we see an unprecedented reaction by Hezbollah… or this is total defeat,” said Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group think tank.
Nasrallah’s killing also showcased Israel’s military and intelligence prowess.
“It demonstrates… just how deeply Israel has penetrated Hezbollah,” said James Dorsey of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
Hezbollah backer Iran has condemned Nasrallah’s assassination, with First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref threatening it would bring about Israel’s “destruction”.
On Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also vowed that the killing of its Revolutionary Guards general Abbas Nilforoushan alongside Nasrallah would “not go unanswered”.
Allied groups across the region such as Yemen’s Huthi rebels, already drawn into the Gaza war, have vowed action against Israel.
An “unmanned aerial target” approaching Israel over the Red Sea — where the Iran-backed Huthis have launched attacks before — was intercepted on Sunday, Israel’s military said.
– Emergency –
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said “well over 200,000 people are displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Syria.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said up to one million people may have been forced from their homes, in potentially the “largest displacement movement” in Lebanon’s history, he said.
The World Food Programme said it had launched an emergency operation to provide meals and support for “up to one million people”.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot will travel to Lebanon on Sunday, his ministry said, after he spoke with Mikati and said Paris sought “an immediate halt” to Israeli strikes.
France also appealed for Hezbollah and Iran, to abstain from any action that could lead to “regional conflagration”.
In Gaza, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said an Israeli strike killed at least three Palestinians in a house in Gaza City, with three more killed in separate strikes in the territory’s north and centre.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,595 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
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