Hezbollah leader’s death causes joy and rage in the region

The explosive attack on a Syrian militant group in Dahiyeh, Lebanon, killed by a high-energy missile unit commander

Netanyahu said at the UN that he would continue to degrade Hezbollah until they achieved their goals. He spoke against a 21-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah in order to allow time for a diplomatic solution. Hezbollah has not responded to the proposal.

The scope of Israel’s operation remains unclear, but officials have said a ground invasion to push the militant group away from the border is a possibility. Israel moved thousands of troops towards the border.

The United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting. Airstrikes have forced 20 primary health care centers to shut down and disrupted access to clean water for nearly 300,000 people.

Hezbollah has suffered heavy damage from Israel’s accelerated strikes. A strike Tuesday in southern Lebanon killed a Hezbollah missile unit commander, Muhammad Ali Ismail, and his deputy, Israel’s military said Saturday. Hezbollah had not confirmed it immediately.

The site that was hit on Friday evening had not been known as Hezbollah’s main headquarters, though it is located in the security quarters, where the group has offices and runs several nearby hospitals.

Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time Hezbollah leader, has transformed an already complex and deadly regional conflict, with a broad array of potential outcomes for Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and beyond.

Israel gave no information about the bomb or how many it used, but the resulting explosion took place in an area greater than a city block. The Israeli army has in its arsenal 2,000-pound, American-made Guided Bombs designed to hit subterranean targets.

Rescue workers were walking over huge slabs of concrete surrounded by high piles of twisted metal. Several craters were visible, one with a car toppled into it. A stream of residents carrying their belongings were seen fleeing along a main road out of the district.

The series of blasts at around nightfall reduced six apartment towers to rubble in Haret Hreik, a densely populated, predominantly Shiite district of Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburbs, according to Lebanon’s national news agency. A wall of billowing black and orange smoke rose into the sky as windows were rattled and houses shaken some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Beirut.

News of the blasts came as Netanyahu was briefing reporters after his U.N. address. Netanyahu ended his briefing after the aide whispered into his ear.

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A lot of people are dead as teams comb through the rubble of six buildings. Following the blast, Israel launched a series of strikes on other areas of the south.

At least six people were killed and 91 were wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said. It was the biggest blast to hit the Lebanese capital in the past year and appeared likely to push the escalating conflict closer to full-fledged war.

Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s top official in Beirut, said in a speech that no matter how many commanders Israel kills, the group has endless numbers of experienced fighters. He said that Hezbollah will fight until Israel is defeated in Gaza.

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. Not long before the explosions Friday evening, thousands gathered in another part of Beirut’s suburbs for the funeral of three Hezbollah members killed in earlier strikes, including the head of the group’s drone unit, Mohammed Surour.

Civil defense workers pulled the bodies of Hiba Ataya, 35, and her mother Sabah Olyan, 52, from the rubble of a building brought down by a strike.

The aim in Gaza is not to dismantle Hamas, but to push Hezbollah away from the border, which is a different goal in Lebanon than in Gaza, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The people in the Israelis were happy. One Tel Aviv apartment building blasted a song with the Hebrew lyrics: “Oh Nasrallah, we’ll take you down, God willing, and send you back to God along with all of Hezbollah.” At a beach in southern Israel, a lifeguard announced to beachgoers over a loudspeaker: “With happiness, joy and cheer, we announce officially that the rat Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated yesterday. People of Israel live.

Nasrallah only very rarely made public appearances during his 32-year tenure atop a group that several nations, including the United States, have labeled a terrorist organization.

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Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the top military commander, said in a video statement Saturday that the unprecedented strikes on Hezbollah’s leadership were not the end of Israel’s toolbox.

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.

“The level of shock among Hezbollah cannot be measured,” Al Sabaileh said. “Simply, they never expected that Israel would initiate and would continue, and does not stop attacking Hezbollah.”

The consequences of the war in Syria could be significant, according to the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the British think tank Chatham House.

“Iran will be looking for some way to turn the tables and save some face,” Vakil wrote in a long series of online posts about the killing and its impact on Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” that includes Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups like the Houthis in Yemen. The axis has not been effective at providing deterrence against Israel.

Orna Mizrahi, an Israeli security expert from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, believes Israel’s successes degrading Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities could be used to force Hezbollah to return to Lebanon.

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.

“The morale blow is going to be massive for Hezbollah, but technically it should be a repetition of what happened in ’92,” says 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. Lammy said that they needed an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the bloodshed, and that a diplomatic solution was the only way to restore security and stability for the Lebanon and Israeli people.

Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement condemning the killing of Nasrallah, saying it “is fraught with even greater dramatic consequences for Lebanon and the entire Middle East.” Russia called for an end to hostilities in Lebanon.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main militant groups in Gaza that have been labeled as terrorist organizations by the United States and several other nations, were defiant. Both Islamic Jihad and Hamas said the deaths of leaders, such as Nasrallah, would increase the strength of the resistance in Lebanon, Palestine and the region. Hamas senior figure Khalil al-Hayya, speaking on Al Jazeera, said the souls of Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh — assassinated in July — “are inside the birds of heaven.”

In Syria, where Hezbollah has supported Assad, people celebrated on the streets according to Syrian journalist Fared Al Mahlool. “People are happy to hear it. … Too many people have been displaced, killed, and lost loved ones because of Nasrallah’s support to the Syrian regime. He said that they took part in the destruction of cities and the displacement of many people.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese have fled the country’s southern and eastern regions that have borne repeated Israeli strikes in the past week. And many have also been pouring over the border to neighboring Syria, Syrian journalist Danny Makki told NPR, speaking from the capital Damascus.

Thousands of reserve soldiers have been called up to the country’s border with Lebanon as Hezbollah continues to fire rocket fire at Israel.

Hezbollah confirmed that its leader of 32 years was killed in Lebanon by an Israeli airstrike, and offered condolences for others killed with him, after what the group called a “treacherous Zionist raid on the southern suburb” of Beirut.

Despite his death, it was noted that Nasrallah was still among us with his thought, spirit, line and sacred approach.

In a White House statement, President Biden claimed that Hezbollah was responsible for hundreds of deaths of Americans over the last four decades.

The Iranian news agency, Mehr, reported that a operational head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps could be in danger due to the attack. The strike claimed the life of Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan. Iran has long financed and supported Hezbollah, while also supplying weapons and missile technology to the group.

The U.N. General Assembly was convened just before the Hezbollah headquarters were attacked. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with protocol, said Netanyahu greenlit the strike before he delivered his address.

Netanyahu said the assassination of Nasrallah, who he called 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.

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Biden said that after the day had elapsed, Nasrallah decided to open a northern front against Israel.

In a separate statement, Biden noted the operation to take out Nasrallah happened within the wider context of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks against Israel.

Even as Israeli forces prepared for a response to retaliatory strikes from Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Information Minister said on Sunday that negotiations for a ceasefire with Israel were still “underway” even as cross-border exchanges of fire continued.

Israel’s killing of Nasrallah is one of many developments that have happened in the Middle East region since last October.

The latest exchanges of fire, combined with Israel’s preparations to invade southern Lebanon has mounted fears that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was heading toward an all-out war.

The IDF said that it had intercepted a number of projectiles from Lebanon that were launched into Israel on Sunday.

Israel Defense Forces said its air force targeted buildings where weapons and military structures were stored in a Telegram statement.

Benjamin Netanyahu came back to Israel earlier than he was expected when he was at the UN as he was said to be preparing for a Hezbollah attack on southern Lebanon.