LAST UPDATE | 28 Sep
US VICE PRESIDENT Kamala Harris called the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “a terrorist with American blood on his hands.”
The Democrat, who is running for president in the November US elections, said she will “always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”
Harris’ comments come after Hezbollah confirmed that the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has been killed following an Israeli strike in Lebanon.
Israel’s military said on Saturday it had “eliminated” Nasrallah following an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Nasrallah’s death will deal a massive blow to the Iran-backed group which he has led since 1992, potentially destabilising Lebanon as a whole.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned what he called an Israeli “massacre” in Lebanon.
More than 720 people have been killed in Lebanon since the conflict escalated on Monday, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Lebanon’s health ministry also gave a preliminary toll of six dead and 91 wounded from the latest strikes on Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs since Friday, the fiercest to hit Hezbollah’s stronghold since Israel and the group last went to war in 2006.
“The massacre of the defenceless people in Lebanon once again revealed the ferocity of the Zionist rabid dog to everyone, and proved the short-sighted and stupid policy of the leaders of the usurping regime,” Khamenei said in a statement, without mentioning the fate of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Rarely seen in public, Nasrallah enjoyed cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters and was the only man in Lebanon with the power to wage war or make peace.
“Hassan Nasrallah is dead,” Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani announced on X.
Another military spokesman, Captain David Avraham, also confirmed to AFP that the Hezbollah chief had been “eliminated” following strikes Friday night on Beirut.
An Israeli military statement said: “During Hassan Nasrallah’s 32-year reign as the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, he was responsible for the murder of many Israeli civilians and soldiers, and the planning and execution of thousands of terrorist activities.”
Israel’s army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi meanwhile vowed to “reach” anyone who threats Israeli citizens.
“The message is simple, anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel — we will know how to reach them,” he said in a statement.
The military also said it killed Hezbollah commanders Muhammad Ali Ismail and Ali Karake, among others.
Israeli jets kept up their bombardment of the city’s southern suburbs on Saturday, sending panicked families fleeing.
An AFP photographer said Saturday dozens of buildings were destroyed.
After heavy strikes Friday, Israel issued fresh warnings for people to leave part of the densely populated Dahiyeh suburbs before dawn.
Hundreds of families spent the night outside, in central Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square or along the seaside boardwalk area.
South Beirut resident Rihab Naseef, 56, slept outside a church.
“I didn’t even pack any clothes, I never thought we would leave like this and suddenly find ourselves on the streets,” Naseef told AFP.
Israel’s military also announced “extensive strikes” on the Beqaa area in eastern Lebanon and on the south, saying it hit “dozens of terror targets”.
It said a surface-to-surface missile fired from Lebanon fell in an open area in central Israel and another was intercepted in the north.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah until the country’s northern border with Lebanon was secured.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safe,” he said.
Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border attacks a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October.
Israel has over the past few days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people and sparked an exodus of around 118,000 people.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Friday a “precise strike” hit Hezbollah’s “central headquarters” underneath residential buildings in Dahiyeh.
In the Haret Hreik neighbourhood, an AFP photographer saw craters up to five metres (16 feet) wide left by the blasts.
A second wave of attacks in the same area followed early Saturday, as the Israeli military said it warned civilians to get away from three buildings in the heart of Dahiyeh.
Early Saturday, Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel, “defending Lebanon and its people”.
Hezbollah later said it launched “a salvo of Fadi-3 rockets” towards the Ramat David airbase in northern Israel.
Israel this week raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.
“We must avoid a regional war at all costs,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told world leaders, again appealing for a ceasefire.
In Israel, too, many were weary of the violence.
“We don’t really know what’s going to happen, there’s talk of a ground offensive or a major operation,” said student Lital Shmuelovich.
Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians.
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 41,586 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
The Lebanon violence has raised fears of a wider spillover, with Iran-backed militants across the Middle East vowing to keep fighting Israel.
Netanyahu addressed Iran in his UN General Assembly speech, saying: “I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran. If you strike us, we will strike you.”
“There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that’s true of the entire Middle East.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the Security Council denounced what he called Netanyahu’s “outrageous threats to invade other states and kill more people”.
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