Written by Maya Gebaili and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The southern suburb of Beirut was hit by successive massive strikes late Saturday into Sunday, sending rumbles across the city and causing flashes of red and white for about 30 minutes that could be seen from above, Reuters witnesses said. After several kilometers.
The strikes came days after Israel bombed the suburbs of Beirut, considered a stronghold of the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah, killing its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and perhaps his potential successor.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safi al-Din, the potential successor, has been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli air strike near the city’s international airport reportedly targeted him.
The Israeli army said that it eliminated Nasrallah in a raid on the party’s central command headquarters in Beirut on September 27. Hezbollah confirmed his death.
Lebanese security sources said that Israeli strikes since Friday on the Dahiya, a residential area and Hezbollah stronghold south of central Beirut, prevented rescue workers from combing the site of Thursday night’s attack.
Hezbollah has not yet commented on Safi al-Din.
His loss would be another blow to the group and its sponsor, Iran. Israeli strikes across the region last year, which have accelerated sharply in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel expanded its activities in Lebanon. A Lebanese security official said that Israel carried out its first strike on Saturday in the northern city of Tripoli, while Israeli forces launched raids in the south.
At least eight strikes rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late Saturday evening, including an area near the airport, after the Israeli military warned some residents to flee, Reuters witnesses said.
Before the recent escalation, the exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah was mostly limited to the Israeli-Lebanese border area, in parallel with the war that Israel has been waging for a year in Gaza against the Palestinian Hamas movement.
Israeli military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Saturday that Israel killed 440 Hezbollah fighters in its ground operations in southern Lebanon and destroyed 2,000 Hezbollah targets. Hezbollah did not announce the number of deaths.
Israel says it has intensified its attack on Hezbollah to enable tens of thousands of citizens to safely return to their homes in northern Israel, which the group has been bombing since last October 8.
Israeli authorities said on Saturday that nine Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon so far.
Civilian deaths and displacement
Lebanese officials say the Israeli attack also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese and forced 1.2 million people – nearly a quarter of the population – from their homes.
The Lebanese security official told Reuters that the raid that took place on Saturday on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli led to the killing of a Hamas member, his wife and two children. Media outlets affiliated with the Palestinian movement said that the raid resulted in the killing of a leader in its armed wing, whom they said was called Saeed Atallah.
Israel said in a statement that it had killed two Hamas members working in Lebanon, but did not say whether they were in Tripoli, a Sunni-majority coastal city that was also targeted during the 2006 war with Hezbollah.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens on Saturday sent people running for shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.
Hezbollah said that it fired missiles at what it called “Ata Military Industries Company near the Sakhnin base” near Haifa. It was not immediately clear what Hezbollah was referring to.
The Israeli army said that two shells crossed from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted while the other fell without causing any damage.
October anniversary. 7
The violence came as the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel approached, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli statistics.
The subsequent Israeli attack on Gaza led to the deaths of nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and the displacement of almost all of the Strip’s population of 2.3 million.
The impact on civilians has sparked widespread protests internationally. Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in major cities around the world on Saturday as the anniversary approached.
Iran, which supports Hezbollah and Hamas and which lost key commanders in the IRGC to Israeli airstrikes this year, fired ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did not cause significant damage.
Israel is studying options for response.
Oil prices rose against the backdrop of the possibility of Israel launching an attack on Iranian oil facilities. US President Joe Biden urged Israel on Friday to study alternatives to striking Iran’s oil infrastructure.
A US Defense Department official said on Saturday that the US Army Commander in the region, General Michael “Eric” Kurella, is traveling to the Middle East, refusing to specify the country or confirm Israeli media reports of his arrival in Israel for consultations. With Israeli military officials.
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