Hezbollah’s Nasrallah killed in Lebanon airstrikes, Israel says

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed on Friday in a series of blasts that destroyed an underground command center in southern Beirut, Israel said on Saturday.

“The Israel Defense Forces confirm that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and one of its founders, was eliminated yesterday,” the Israeli government said in a statement posted online.

Hezbollah has yet to confirm the fate of Nasrallah, one of the most prominent figures in the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.” The Lebanese cleric had headed the militant group since 1992, after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Nasrallah’s death would send a seismic shock across the Middle East and would run the risk of triggering a wider regional war that Israel’s Western allies have been scrambling to avert.

The IDF said several bunker buster bombs crumpled the headquarters facility built beneath residential buildings in Beirut in a series of explosions that could be heard across the Lebanese capital. The IDF said other senior commanders also were killed in the attack.

Israeli officials said the assault was a targeted attempt on Nasrallah’s life, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be launched shortly after he gave a speech at the United Nations in which he vowed to continue the military campaign.

Hezbollah commanders

“The strike was carried out while the top brass of Hezbollah were at their headquarters and engaged in coordinating terror activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” the IDF said.

At least eight people were killed and more than a hundred wounded in the overnight strikes, according to Lebanese authorities, but the IDF puts the death toll higher. An estimated 700 people have been killed in attacks across the south of Lebanon and its capital in recent days, with around 90,000 forced to flee their homes. 

A week of extraordinary Israeli military operations has seen the elimination of the Iranian-backed militia’s top commanders and, according to some Israeli estimates, nearly half of its huge arsenal of missiles and rockets.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said earlier this week that the Israeli military was preparing for a possible occupation of territory in Lebanon, warning “military boots will enter enemy territory.” The IDF has sent two brigades to northern Israel to train for a possible ground invasion.

Neither Hezbollah nor its sponsor Iran has commented on Nasrallah, but Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement on Saturday insisting that “all the Resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah” and called on the Lebanese people to “confront and usurp” Israel.

In the early hours of Saturday, posters appeared on Tehran’s highways depicting Nasrallah and proclaiming “Hezbollah lives.”

“Israel clearly infiltrated Hezbollah at highly sensitive and consequential levels, killing senior command networks with airstrikes, paralysing its communication and coordination capacity, and grinding the organization down,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute. “As the region faces the gravest threat yet to regional security in nearly a year of conflict, there are several unknowns, including how Hezbollah may respond.”

Regional power

Nasrallah joined Hezbollah in 1982, the year it was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members. During his 32-year leadership, he is credited with turning Hezbollah into a regional power in its own right.

“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” the IDF said in another statement posted on X.

Israel maintained a heavy series of airstrikes against Hezbollah Saturday morning. Israeli leaders say their escalating airstrikes are being carried out to preempt escalation into a full-blown war, but observers fear it could have quite the opposite effect and is putting the region on course for a wider conflict.

As Hezbollah and Iran consider their next steps and whether and how to retaliate, the IDF’s Halevi warned that Nasrallah’s death showed that Israel can and will reach anyone who threatens it.

“The is not the end of the tools in the toolbox. The message is simple, to anyone who threatens the citizens of the State of Israel, we will know how to get to them,” Halevi said.

Israel has warned that unless Hezbollah withdraws all its forces north of the Litani River, 18 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel will launch a ground assault.

Netanyahu is coming under intense domestic political pressure to force Hezbollah to cease rocket attacks on Israeli communities near the border in northern Israel. The rocket attacks were launched by Hezbollah immediately following last October’s Hamas attack on southern Israel and have forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 Israelis from their homes.