ON FRIDAY EVENING, Israeli jets dropped as many as eighty bombs on south Beirut, levelling several multi-storey buildings in the densely populated residential neighbourhood of Haret Hreik. The massive strike was heard and felt across the city, with windows in apartments miles away shaking.
Panic quickly spread throughout Haret Hreik, a Hezbollah stronghold that is also home to tens of thousands of predominantly Lebanese Shia, and which had already been struck several times since July. The Israeli military warned that more neighbourhoods in south Beirut would be hit and that residents should leave immediately.
As night fell, there was a mass exodus from southern Beirut. People walked with backpacks and pet birds, or crammed into cars with mattresses and blankets piled high on top and scrambled to other, safer parts of Beirut. Soon after, several strikes hit southern Beirut during a night when few slept.
News reports quickly emerged that the target of Friday’s massive missile strike was Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Shia cleric who had led the paramilitary group Hezbollah for the last 32 years. Hezbollah made no official statement that night, while Israeli sources said they were waiting for confirmation of Nasrallah’s death.
Some of those displaced by the strikes awoke on Saturday morning after spending the night at Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut. Dazed-looking families with young children slept in doorways and in a small park nearby.
As the hot sun blazed, they looked for any shade they could find. Mothers sat on concrete pavements breastfeeding and elderly people rested their walking sticks as they sat on rugs laid under the shade of a tree.
At around 2.30 pm on Saturday, on the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar channel, the party announced that “the master of resistance,” Hassan Nasrallah, “has moved alongside his Lord as a great martyr.” They stated, “He has joined the caravan of the martyrs of Karbala” and “his companions, the immortal martyrs whom he led for thirty years, guiding them from victory to victory.”
At Martyrs’ Square, some men screamed while others began praying, as word that Hezbollah had confirmed the death of its leader Hassan Nasrallah spread among the displaced Lebanese who had flocked to Martyrs’ Square for safety. Some women huddled among themselves, saying it wasn’t true that he was dead.
“He’s a mythical figure that changed the course of history,” said one Lebanese Shia man, who had been displaced from the south. “Fearless, uncompromising and faithful to his cause. He lived his life fully, accomplished his duty and left behind him a great legacy. He will be remembered for generations to come.”
Under Nasrallah’s leadership, the group ousted Israeli forces which had occupied southern Beirut for 20 years, and expanded its reach by running an array of social services for the communities in the group’s strongholds in southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa valley and south Beirut into the Lebanese political sphere by running candidates in elections.
Hezbollah also took control of much of Lebanon’s state infrastructure and dealt violently with its critics and political opponents. Several of its members were found guilty by a UN tribunal of assassinating former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and sent its members down to intimidate and assault Lebanese people participating in anti-government protests in 2019. It also supported Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in his brutal crackdown on his opponents, including Palestinians in Syria.
“For both foes and followers, Nasrallah was larger than life, occupying a place in the Arab world that rivals the mythic aura of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s legacy was one of pan-Arab nationalism. He was a unifying figure across the region,” wrote Hassan Hassan and Kareem Shaheen in an obituary for Hassan Nasrallah in Newlines.
“Nasrallah, by contrast, operated from within a Shiite-Islamist framework, one tied tightly to Iran, though his influence often crossed sectarian lines. His death strikes at the heart of an entire axis of regional power, creating ripple effects that will not easily be contained.”
“The Hezbollah leader’s charisma and his ability to fuse the roles of military commander, political leader and cultural icon placed him in a different league. He did not merely work within a system; he helped to create it. Hezbollah was a grassroots movement, nurtured by Iran but built on the ground in Lebanon, and Nasrallah shaped it into a formidable force capable of challenging Israel and shaping the course of conflicts across the region.”
As news spread that Hezbollah had confirmed Hassan Nasrallah’s death, a large Lebanese military convoy drove through Martyrs’ Square. While across Beirut, money exchanges and many businesses closed down, some in mourning and others due to fears of unrest.
While many in Lebanon will welcome Nasrallah’s death, it leaves a large power vacuum in a fractured and dysfunctional country that is now embroiled in a war that has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes while the death toll rises.
Even after Nasrallah’s death, more strikes were launched across Lebanon. On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed at least 105 people in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa, and the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to figures provided overnight by Lebanon’s health ministry. In the Saida region, a single bombardment in Ain al-Delb killed 32 people including people who had sought shelter from air strikes elsewhere in the south.
The death toll rose further with a targeted strike shortly after 1 am on a residential apartment in Cola, a neighbourhood of Beirut city. This is the first time the main metropolitan area of the capital has been hit since the war between Israel and Hezbollah began on 8 October.
The strike killed four people, including three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left wing Palestinian group that has been in decline since the 1980s and is not viewed as a strong force with the current Palestinian movement. On X, Omar Baddar suggested the point of the strike, which has not yet been publicly claimed by Israel, was “to cross all redlines, to terrorise all of Lebanon & show them who’s in charge, & to force Hezbollah & Iran into a corner.”
In his first address since Nasrallah was killed, Naim Qassem, the deputy head of Hezbollah who has since taken over as the acting head of the group, said on Monday: “Despite the loss of commanders and the attacks on civilians in all of Lebanon and the big sacrifices, we will not change our positions. We will continue supporting Gaza and defending Lebanon.”
Michael Young, a senior editor at Carnegie Middle East Centre, said on X that “Hezbollah is in a position where it can’t retreat, but if it keeps fighting, as Naim Qassem promises, I fear this will provoke the Shia community’s further dislocation and destruction. Can Hezbollah afford such an outcome? Can Lebanon?”
Hannah McCarthy is a journalist based in Beirut.
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