L: New Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine R: Former chief Hassan Nasrallah (Khamenei.ir/Wikimedia Commons)
Israeli security officials believe they killed former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine, in a Beirut airstrike, according to reports. The news, if confirmed, would deal a lethal double whammy to the Iran-backed terror group after it was left reeling last week by Nasrallah's death in a similar strike.
The "growing assessment" from the Jewish state's military establishment is that Safieddine is likely dead, Israeli media reported Friday. Safieddine, much like Nasrallah, was meeting with other senior Hezbollah leaders in an underground bunker, which Israel struck late Thursday. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for further information.
Safieddine's death would cap an extraordinary two weeks for Israel's military, which has decapitated the terror group through strikes on its leaders and "targeted" raids on its tunnels and other infrastructure. In the week since Nasrallah’s death, Israel has continued to hammer the terror group’s outposts across Lebanon, killing another 250 fighters through air assaults and ground operations, according to the IDF.
Israeli ground forces conducted "limited, localized, and targeted raids" on Hezbollah outposts on Friday following the strike on Safieddine, seeking to further degrade the terror group's capabilities along the country’s northern border, where more than 50,000 residents have been evacuated from their homes. The Jewish state has hit more than 3,000 Hezbollah sites across Lebanon, representing the largest ongoing air operation in Israel’s history.
Israel's week of intensive air and land operations has fundamentally changed the regional landscape, putting Iran on the back foot as the Jewish state plots a "harsh" response to Tehran's Tuesday ballistic missile barrage.
The IDF says operations along the Lebanese border will continue for at least the next several weeks, suggesting that Hezbollah missile depots and infrastructure remain top targets in the wake of Nasrallah’s—and, most likely, Safieddine's—deaths.
In less than a month of intensive precision airstrikes, Israel has eliminated Hezbollah’s entire senior leadership, defanging a group that has wreaked havoc on the Jewish state for more than three decades.
Those killed in this week's ground assaults included 21 Hezbollah field commanders, 5 brigade-level commanders, 10 company commanders, and 6 platoon commanders, according to the Times of Israel.
On Thursday, Israel conducted "a precise, intelligence-based strike in the area of Beirut" that killed Mohammad Rashid Sakafi, the Hezbollah official responsible for communications networks, the IDF announced earlier on Friday. As a "senior Hezbollah terrorist," Sakafi helmed Hezbollah’s communications team since 2000 and "invested significant efforts to develop communication capabilities between all of Hezbollah's units."
Israeli paratroopers killed an additional 15 Hezbollah operatives on Thursday after they were spotted manning tunnel shafts and other buildings in southern Lebanon, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel has also suffered its own casualties, reporting Friday that 2 soldiers were killed and 24 others wounded from an explosive drone launched by Iran-backed militants in Iraq. A terror attack earlier in the week killed seven people and wounded several others, just before Iran bombarded Israel with more than 180 ballistic missiles.
Amid the offensive in southern Lebanon, Israel is expected to attack Iran in the coming days, promising it will make Tehran pay for Tuesday’s strike, which saw dozens of missiles bypass Israel’s air defense systems to land in populated areas, including Tel Aviv.
It is believed that some 20 Iranian missiles hit an air base in southern Israel and at least three others landed near one in central Israel, according to videos reviewed on Friday by the Washington Post. Two other missiles are said to have struck near the Mossad’s headquarters outside of Tel Aviv.
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