The Israeli military carried out airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs and other parts of Lebanon a day after a heavy attack on Hezbollah headquarters, leaving the fate of leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah still undetermined, Reuters said.
Tel Aviv carried out a five-hour sustained attack on Beirut. The Saturday operation followed Israel’s most powerful Friday attack on the city in the conflict with Hezbollah, which has been running alongside the war in Gaza for nearly a year.
The condition of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah remains uncertain as no statement issued yesterday. A source close to Hezbollah said Nasrallah was alive. Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported that he was safe.
The military announced in a statement the killing of Hezbollah missile unit commander Muhammad Ali Ismail and his deputy Hossein Ahmed Ismail. The military claimed to have struck Hezbollah facilities in the Bekaa Valley, a region in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria that it has been targeting for the past week.
Israel says returning some 70,000 evacuated Israelis to their homes is the goal of the war. Hours before the latest shelling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to the United Nations. He said:
As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely.
Simultaneously, Lebanese health authorities confirmed that six people lost their lives and 91 suffered injuries in the first attack on Friday. It is the fourth attack on Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut in a week and the largest since the 2006 war. The strikes have killed more than 700 people in the past week alone, authorities said.
Earlier, the Israeli military ordered residents in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate as the strikes targeted rocket launchers and weapons depots they said were under civilian homes. Thus, some 100,000 people were displaced in Lebanon this week, bringing the total number of displaced people in the country to more than 200,000.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and missiles at Israeli targets, including Tel Aviv. The group said it fired rockets at the northern Israeli town of Safed on Friday, where a woman suffered minor injuries.
The exchanges of fire have sharply heightened fears that the conflict could spiral out of control, potentially involving Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer, as well as the United States, Israel’s main ally.
