LAST UPDATE | 29 Sep
ISRAEL TODAY SAID it killed another senior Hezbollah official in an air strike after dealing the Iran-backed group a seismic blow by assassinating its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel announced the killing of Nabil Qaouq, a member of Hezbollah’s central council in a strike Saturday, adding that its air force has continued to hit “dozens” more targets around Lebanon.
Israeli strikes have in recent months 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.
Hezbollah confirmed yesterday that its leader Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike a day earlier on Beirut’s southern suburbs, dealing a massive blow to the group he had led for decades.
Lebanon’s health minister said yesterday that 1,030 people – including 156 women and 87 children – have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon in less than two weeks.
The country’s health ministry said Israeli strikes yesterday had killed 33 people and wounded 195 others.
Nasrallah’s killing marks a sharp escalation in nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel, and risks plunging the whole region into a wider war.
Israel continued to pound Lebanon today, with the military saying it “attacked dozens of terrorist targets in the territory of Lebanon in the last few hours”.
The strikes targeted “buildings where weapons and military structures of the organisation were stored”.
The military has attacked hundreds of Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon since yesterday, it said, as it seeks to disable the group’s military operations and infrastructure.
Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border strikes on Israeli troops a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.
Following Nasrallah’s death, Netanyahu said Israel had “settled the score” for the killing of Israelis and citizens of other countries, including Americans.
Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah, enjoying cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “His elimination makes the world a safer place.”
But Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref denounced the “unjust bloodshed” and threatened that Nasrallah’s killing will bring about Israel’s “destruction”.
Hamas condemned Nasrallah’s killing as a “cowardly terrorist act”.
Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Syria all declared public mourning, while Yemen’s Huthi rebels said they fired a missile at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport yesterday, hoping to hit it as Netanyahu returned from a trip to New York.
US President Joe Biden – whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier – said it was a “measure of justice”, while Kamala Harris, who is running to replace him in the White House, called Nasrallah “a terrorist with American blood on his hands”.
Iran called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in protest at Nasrallah’s killing.
In the letter, Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called on the Security Council to “take immediate and decisive action to stop Israel’s ongoing aggression” and prevent it “from dragging the region into full-scale war”.
Analysts told AFP that Nasrallah’s death leaves Hezbollah under pressure to deliver a response.
“Either we see an unprecedented reaction by Hezbollah… or this is total defeat,” said Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group think tank.
Most of the deaths in Lebanon came on Monday, the deadliest day of violence since the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.
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.
Hundreds of families spent the night into Saturday outside as air strikes pounded south Beirut.
“I didn’t even pack any clothes, I never thought we would leave like this and suddenly find ourselves on the streets,” south Beirut resident Rihab Naseef, 56, told AFP.
Meanwhile, air strikes of unknown origin in eastern Syria killed 12 pro-Iran fighters and wounded a large number of people, a war monitor said Sunday.
The strikes, in and around the city of Deir Ezzor and near the border with Iraq, were not immediately claimed but had targeted military positions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until the border with Lebanon is secured.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safe,” he said.
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 7 October 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 41,595 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.
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