Tel Aviv CNN —
The Israeli military has claimed that it killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in Friday’s airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon, which if confirmed would mark a major escalation in hostilities. Hezbollah has not yet commented.
Israeli fighter jets targeted the headquarters of the militant group, located in an area of the capital’s southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh, the Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Nasrallah had been operating from the headquarters and “advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel.”
An Israeli official claimed they knew Nasrallah is dead based on a “combination of types of information,” but refused to give more detail. “We have confirmation.”
“And I apologize, but I can’t go into the specifics of what intelligence,” the official said. “But I can tell you that the IDF has confirmed that Hassan Nasrallah is no longer with us.”
Nasrallah turned Hezbollah into the most robustly armed non-state group in the region – commanding a dedicated following across Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. It is the most dominant political force in crisis-ridden Lebanon. Much of the Western world has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
Fears of an all-out war peaked earlier this month, after Israel unleashed a wave of lethal explosions across Lebanon targeting Hezbollah fighters. Many of those killed were civilian bystanders.
Then on Monday, Israel launched an intensive aerial campaign in southern and eastern Lebanon, in what was the deadliest day for the country in nearly two decades. Hezbollah has fired multiple rocket barrages into northern Israel in response to the attacks.
Israeli bombs in Lebanon have since killed at least 700 people, and thousands more have been injured, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday.
Nearly 120,000 others have been displaced, according to OCHA, in a country where both Lebanese and refugees from other countries were already facing sharp poverty, economic instability and limited access to healthcare. Estimates in Lebanon suggest that number could be much higher.
An Israeli military official said they did not yet know how many civilians were killed in Israel’s strike on southern Beirut that it says killed Nasrallah.
For most of the past year, Israel and Hezbollah have traded skirmishes at the border, following Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks into southern Israel.
The Lebanese militant group is part of a larger Iran-led axis across the region – spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq – that says they will continue striking Israeli targets as long as the war in Gaza rages on.
Hezbollah says it has been firing on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and Palestinians trying to survive Israeli attacks in Gaza, which have killed 41,586 people and injured another 96,210, according to the Ministry of Health there.
At least 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attacks and more than 250 others abducted, according to Israeli authorities. Around 60,000 Israeli civilians have been forced from their homes by Hezbollah attacks that began on October 8.
As the Israeli military intensifies its war on multiple fronts in the region, Western allies have warned of catastrophic consequences in Lebanon – which they say could even exceed the irrevocable destruction and human devastation in Gaza.
Just overnight Saturday, Israeli forces renewed attacks in the densely populated Dahiyeh neighborhood overnight, according to Lebanon’s state news agency. Israeli strikes razed buildings to rubble, and killed at least six people, according to the country’s health ministry.
A CNN team on the ground reported large flashes and thuds of impacting Israeli missiles are echoing across the capital.
The IDF said it was targeting what it alleges are buildings used by Hezbollah as command centers, weapons productions and storage sites. Hezbollah has denied that its weapons are being stored in civilian buildings targeted by Israeli strikes.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
