Mideast on edge as Nasrallah’s killing confirmed

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• Another senior leader, member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps dead in south Beirut strike
• Israel targets warehouse near Beirut airport; Lebanese group responds with rocket fire
• UN refugee chief says over 200,000 people displaced inside Lebanon

BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been killed, the Lebanese movement said on Saturday, dealing a seismic blow to the Iran-backed group that has been engaged in a year of cross-border hostilities with Israel.

Hezbollah’s statement came after Israel’s military said it had killed Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, in a move that could destabilise Lebanon as a whole.

Iran said a senior member of its Revolutionary Guard Corps was also killed in the same strike. A source close to Hezbollah said the group’s top commander in south Lebanon, Ali Karake, had also died.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported General Abbas Nilforou­shan, deputy commander of the Guards’ operations, died in the strike that killed Nasrallah.

“Sayyed Hassan Nasr­allah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Rarely seen in public, Nasrallah had a large following and was the only man in Lebanon with the power to fight back or make peace.

Lebanon announced three days of mourning for Nasrallah on Saturday after a huge Israeli air strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs the previous day killed the Hezbollah leader.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the official mourning would start on Monday, with flags to fly at half-mast on public buildings, a statement said.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, in a televised briefing, called Nasrallah “one of the greatest enemies of the State of Israel of all time”.

Sayyed Hassan Nasr­allah

Fresh strikes

The Israeli military said that in a strike on southern Beirut on Saturday, it killed a senior member of Hezbollah’s intelligence, naming him as Hassan Khalil Yassin.

Hezbollah made no mention so far of this.

A Lebanese security source said an Israeli strike on Saturday targeted a warehouse near Beirut airport, Lebanon’s only international passenger facility.

“An Israeli strike targeted a warehouse in the vicinity of the airport,” the source said.

Israeli forces continued to pound Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold into Saturday, sending panicked families fleeing.

Middle East expert James Dorsey described Friday’s attack as “very sophisticated”, adding it “demonstrates not only significant technological cap­acity but just how deeply Israel has penetrated Hezbollah”.

After Friday’s heavy strikes, Israel issued fresh warnings for people to leave part of the densely populated southern Dahiyeh suburbs before dawn.

Hundreds of families spent the night outside, in central Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square or along the seaside boardwalk.

“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.

Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on Kabri in northern Israel and later said it launched “a salvo of Fadi-3 rockets” towards the Ramat David airbase in northern Israel, which it has targeted before.

Israel has shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

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.

Regional war

Israel has raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.

“We must avoid a regional war at all costs,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told world leaders, again appealing for a ceasefire.

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.

The Lebanon violence has raised fears of a wider spillover. Fearing greater violence, the United States ordered diplomats’ families to leave Lebanon, following a similar move by Germany, which has also reduced staffing at its missions in Israel, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank.

Flights cancelled

Lebanon’s transport ministry asked an Iranian plane not to enter the Lebanese airspace after Israel warned air traffic control at the Beirut airport that it would use “force” if it landed, a ministry source told Reuters.

Late on Friday, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israeli air force planes were “patrolling the area of the Beirut airport” and would not allow “hostile flights with weapons to land” there.

Iran Air has cancelled all flights to Beirut until further notice, the airline’s spokesman told local media on Saturday.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2024