Israeli strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Beirut targets ‘Hassan Nasrallah’s presumed successor’
An Israeli airstrike on Lebanese capital Beirut on Thursday reportedly targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, the man widely regarded as the heir of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited two Israeli sources as saying Hashem Safieddine was the target. The Israeli Defence Forces has not yet commented on the strike.
The Israel’s military, however, said it had hit Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut, as troops battled militants near the border and warplanes bombarded their strongholds around the country.
An unnamed source close to Hezbollah, a military group backed by Iran, told news agency AFP that Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s south Beirut stronghold late Thursday.
10 updates on Israel-Iran war:
1.An Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Beirut has killed nine people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of Beirut.
2.US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that “we can avoid” all-out war in the Middle East. “I don’t believe there is going to be an all-out war. I think we can avoid it,” Joe Biden told reporters at the White House when asked how confident he was that full-blown war in the region could be averted. He added: “But there is a lot to do yet, a lot to do yet.”
3.Oil prices inched up in early Asian trading hours on Friday, holding on to their strong weekly gains, as investors weighed the Middle East conflict and the potential disruption in crude flows against an amply-supplied global market. Both benchmarks were on track for weekly gains of about 8%. Joe Biden said on Thursday the US was discussing strikes on Iran’s oil facilities as retaliation for Tehran’s missile attack on Israel. The comments contributed to a 5 per cent rally in oil prices.
4. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is expected to elaborate on Iran’s thinking in a sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran on Friday, his first in nearly five years.
5. The UN Security Council has affirmed its full support for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after Israel banned the UN chief from entering the country. In several messages Thursday almost certainly aimed at Israel, the 15-member council “underscored that any decision not to engage with the U.N. secretary-general or the United Nations is counterproductive, especially in the context of escalating tensions In the Middle East”.
6. The Israeli military said it has killed a senior Hezbollah militant involved in the group’s development of precision guided missiles. It said Mohammed Anisi was killed in a recent airstrike that targeted the militant group’s intelligence branch in Beirut.
7. The State Department said around 250 Americans and their immediate families, including non-US citizens, have left Lebanon in the past two days on government-organized contract flights.
8. Lebanon’s crisis response unit said nearly 1.2 million people have been displaced from their homes in Lebanon because of the escalating war between Israel and Hezbollah. Among them are more than 250,000 Syrian citizens and 82,000 Lebanese citizens who have crossed into Syria between September 23 and September 30, according to the report released on Thursday, citing figures provided by Lebanese General Security. Nearly 164,000 are living in group shelters in Lebanon.
9. At least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday, with the Israeli military saying it killed a Hamas commander. The Israeli military said in a statement its air force had killed the head of Hamas’ network in Tulkarm in a strike. It identified him as Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.
10. The G-7 said it was “deeply concerned” about the situation in Lebanon and cited the need “for a cessation of hostilities as soon as possible,” though unlike in the case of Gaza it didn’t demand an immediate cease-fire. The US and some of its G-7 and Arab allies unsuccessfully sought to broker a truce in the Lebanon conflict just before Israel killed Nasrallah.