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Israel’s military says it has killed Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive strike on Beirut, in the latest devastating blow to the Lebanese militant group.
The strike in southern Beirut was part of an intense bombardment carried out by Israeli forces over the past 24 hours, with its fighter jets bombing numerous sites in a wave of attacks in southern and eastern Lebanon.
It capped a dramatic escalation of Israel’s offensive against Hizbollah, which has taken a heavy toll on the Iran-backed militant group’s capabilities and stoked fears that the year-long hostilities between the two sides are on the verge of erupting into an all-out war.
Herzi Halevi, the chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said on Saturday that the strike did not mark the conclusion of Israel’s offensive. “This is not the end of our toolbox,” he said. “The message is simple: anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel — we will know how to reach them.”
Hizbollah did not immediately comment on the Israeli announcement, which claimed that the strike in Beirut had also killed the head of Hizbollah’s southern front, Ali Karaki and other senior commanders.
But Nasrallah’s death — if confirmed — would be by far the heaviest blow that the Iran-backed militant group has sustained in its four decades of existence.
A cleric from a Shia family from Beirut, Nasrallah took control of Hizbollah in 1992, and became an increasingly important figure in Iran’s so-called axis of resistance. His role in the alliance of militant groups reached its peak after the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful commander, in 2020.
His death will raise doubts about the future of Hizbollah, an Islamist revolutionary group that was created by Iran during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s, and threatens to tip Lebanon into chaos.
During his time in charge, Nasrallah oversaw Hizbollah’s rise to become the paramount political force in the country and a virtual state within a state.
The strike on Beirut came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday at the UN in New York that Israel “must defeat” Hizbollah despite international pressure for a ceasefire.
Over the past two weeks, Israel has escalated its offensive against the militant group, killing a string of its senior commanders. This week it embarked on an intense bombardment of sites across Lebanon that killed more than 600 people and displaced more than 90,000.
On Wednesday, Israel called up two reserve brigades for “operational missions” in the north of the country, with Halevi telling troops to prepare for a possible ground offensive in Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it was continuing its bombardment on Saturday, carrying out “extensive” bombing raids in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country as well as striking further targets in Beirut, after warning civilians in some densely populated neighbourhoods to evacuate.
