The top leader of Hezbollah was killed by the Israelis

The aftermath of the September 11 attack on the headquarters of the militant Hezbollah militia in the outskirts of the Negev region

Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah became one of the most powerful militias in the Middle East, boasting a military force stronger even than the Lebanese army. Funded by Iran, Hezbollah trained troops from Hamas. His organization also provides social services.

BEIRUT — The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut on Friday in a series of massive explosions that targeted the leader of the militant group and leveled multiple high-rise apartment buildings.

There is a person called Al-Shalchi. It was in this year that the longtime Hezbollah leader became an icon. He had just led his militia in a war that liberated southern Lebanon from Israeli control. The poor Shiite family of the north of Lebanon had a child named Nasrallah. Nasrallah knew how to run a group that was a Shiite political and paramilitary group. He became Hezbollah’s leader two days after their leader, Abbas Musawi, died.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the strongest armed force in Lebanon, began firing rockets into Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, saying it was a show of support for the Palestinians. Since then, it and the Israeli military have traded fire almost daily, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes on both sides of the border.

The group stated that Nasrallah had joined his fellow martyrs. The official Iranian news agency claims that a commander in the Revolutionary Guards was killed along with Nasrallah.

Loud music was heard in Tel Aviv after the Israeli military said that Nasrallah wouldn’t be able to terrorise the world.

Nasrallah’s Voice at the Warp: New Perspectives on a Hero in the Middle East, by Hadeel Al-Shalchi

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To many, Nasrallah is the leader of a terrorist organization, but to others in the Middle East, as we just heard, he’s viewed as a hero. NPR’s Hadeel Al-Shalchi looked at who he was.

HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: In a fiery speech at a podium in Lebanon in 2000, Hassan Nasrallah compares Israel’s military capability to a weak spiderweb.

He became famous for his thick beard, black turban, cloak and charisma. Speaking with a slight lisp, Nasrallah appealed to regular Arabs. The Center for Near Eastern Studies is located at New York University.

BAZZI: An extreme contrast to most of the other political leaders in Lebanon, whose children would be sent to Switzerland, to – and to universities. He was making the same type of sacrifice that other people’s children were asked to make.

Beirut bombings kill thousands of people, killing many in a city block, the prime minister of Hezbollah tells UN Secretary General Reramble

During his 32-year tenure atop the group, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by several nations, Nasrallah rarely made public appearances.

She wrote that the weakened and battered state of Hezbollah gives her a short window of opportunity to diminish its strategic capabilities further before international pressure on Israel to cease operations. Israel needs to plan an exit strategy with the U.S. to end the northern conflict.

Israel may be able to push the group away from the border with a ground invasion. Israel moved thousands of troops toward the border in preparation.

85,000 people are now residing in public schools and other shelters after being displaced by the fighting. The Air strikes have forced 20 primary health care centers to shut down and disrupted access to clean water for nearly 300,000 people.

Hezbollah has fired 9,300 rockets at Israel, killing 49 people and wounding 372, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office. The Lebanese health ministry separately announced Saturday that more than 1,000 people had been killed in Lebanon over just the past 10 days, including dozens of women and children. More than 6,000 had been wounded, it said.

The site that was hit Friday evening isn’t normally known as Hezbollah’s main headquarters, though it is in the group’s security quarters and runs several nearby hospitals.

Israel provided no immediate comment about the type of bomb or how many it used, but the resulting explosion levelled an area greater than a city block. The Israeli army has sophisticated guided bombs that it uses to hit subterranean targets.

Rescue workers were climbing over large slabs of concrete surrounded by high piles of twisted metal. One crater was caused by a car falling into it. A stream of residents carrying their belongings were seen fleeing along a main road out of the district.

The airstrikes Friday had leveled several large residential buildings in southern Beirut, which Israeli officials had almost immediately labeled the headquarters of Hezbollah in statements they issued even as the smoke and debris clouds from the explosion rose above the city.

Netanyahu was talking to reporters after his address to the UN. Netanyahu ended his briefing when a military aide whispered into his ear.

Hezbollah and Hamas in Israel: The Rise and Fall of the Gaza Strip, and a Signal from the Gaza Strikes

The death toll is likely to rise significantly as teams comb through the rubble of six buildings. Following the initial blast, Israel launched a number of strikes in the southern suburbs.

More than 90 people were injured and six died in the strikes, but the health ministry said they were still clearing rubble meaning those numbers would likely rise.

People in the giant crowd waved their fists in the air and chanted, “We will never accept humiliation,” as they marched marched behind the three coffins, wrapped in the group’s yellow flag.

Hezbollah officials and their supporters remain defiant. Thousands of people gathered for the funeral of three Hezbollah members who had been killed in earlier strikes, including the head of the group’s drone unit.

Civil defense workers pulled the bodies of a mother and her daughter from the rubble of a fallen building in the southern Lebanon city of Tyre.

In Gaza, Israel aims to dismantle Hamas’ military and political regime, but the goal in Lebanon is to push Hezbollah away from the border — “not a high bar like Gaza” in terms of operational objectives, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to military briefing guidelines.

There were continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon Saturday morning. Hezbollah rockets continued to fly towards a swath of northern and central Israel after the Israeli military said reserve troops would mobilize near the border with Lebanon.

Israel’s top military commander, Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, issued a video statement Saturday, in which he said the unprecedented strikes Friday that had targeted Hezbollah’s leadership was “not the end” for what he termed Israel’s “toolbox.’

The mood among Israelis was jubilant. One building in Tel Aviv played a song that said, Oh Nasrallah, we will take you down, God willing, and send you back to God along with all of Hezbollah. The lifeguard at the beach in southern Israel told the beachgoers that the rat was assassinated on the beach. The people of Israel live.”

Amer Al Sabaileh, a Jordanian security expert and close observer of Hezbollah, said the fact Nasrallah was willing to take the high risk to his life of gathering with other Hezbollah commanders amid Israel’s campaign indicates the group was in crisis after two weeks of crippling Israeli attacks.

Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the British think tank Chatham House, says that the regional consequences could be significant.

Iran will look for some way to turn the tables and save its face after Hezbollah’s assassination, writes Vakil in a lengthy series of online posts. The axis has not been effective at providing Iran deterrence against Israel.

Orna Mizrahi is an Israeli security expert from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and she said that Israel could use its successes against Hezbollah to get them to return to their border with northern Israel.

Hezbollah’s succession plans and the process by which Nasrallah may be replaced are opaque, but should follow a blueprint that saw his own elevation more than 30 years ago, according to Nick Blanford, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and long-time expert of Hezbollah based in Beirut.

It is likely that this will be a repetition of what happened in ’92, according to Blanford. “The Shura Council sits down and they elect somebody else.”

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, in a post on X, said he had spoken with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Saturday. “We agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the bloodshed,” Lammy said, adding that “a diplomatic solution is the only way to restore security and stability for the Lebanese and Israeli people.”

The president said Nasrallah’s death was a measure of justice for his many victims. He was in favor of Israel protecting itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups.

Iraqi state television announced a three-day period of mourning to honor the martyrdom of Nasrullah. On the station’s official website, they say that this heinous crime will bolster the spirit of resistance in people’s hearts and enhance the will of victory in facing the Zionist entity.

Makki said that Syrians are more concerned with getting them to safety and helping them in the humanitarian sense as a result of Hezbollah leader’s death. He is a big individual in the region and has been involved in politics of the Middle East.

Thousands of people have fled the country because of Israeli strikes in the past week. Danny Makki, a Syrian journalist, said that many people have been pouring over the border to Syria.

In Washington, President Biden in a White House statement said Nasrallah and Hezbollah “were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror.”

In his first public remarks on Friday’s attack, Netanyahu said the assassination of Nasrallah, who he described as “the architect” of a plan to “annihilate” Israel, was an “essential condition” for Israel to achieve its war goals.

The Israeli military ordered limitations on public gatherings in central Israel in a sign that the country was preparing for possible retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah or other Iran-supported militias.