Late Hamas leader Hassan Nasrallah (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM—The Israel Defense Forces killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on the Iran-backed terrorist group's central headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the IDF said on Saturday.

"Last night, in a precise strike on Hezbollah's terrorist headquarters in the neighborhood in Beirut, the IDF eliminated the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, Hassan Nasrallah," IDF international spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters in a briefing. "I can now confirm this to you."

"Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world," the IDF said on X.

The Israeli airstrike also eliminated Ali Karaki, Hezbollah's Southern Front commander, and other leaders of the group, according to the IDF.

"The strike was conducted while Hezbollah's senior chain of command, what's left of it, were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel," Shoshani said.

Hezbollah has yet to confirm or deny the deaths of Nasrallah and Karaki.

Shoshani said the Hezbollah headquarters were located underground, beneath a residential building, in keeping with the group's strategy "to hide behind civilians." He said the IDF always takes precautions to avoid civilian deaths, but he was not prepared to speak to the specifics of the strike on the headquarters, including the types of munitions that were used or the extent of the collateral damage.

During Nasrallah's 32 years at the helm of Hezbollah, the group carried out numerous terror attacks in the Jewish state and around the world, killing Israelis, Americans, and others. He also led the group into the Syrian civil war, backing the country's president, Bashar Al Assad, in massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians. Israel, the United States, and the European Union have designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

"Nasrallah is one of the world's strongest, or was one of the world's strongest and most influential terrorists and one of the terrorists with the most capabilities in the world, and he was a real threat with the blood of thousands of people on his hands," Shoshani said.

Israel early Saturday launched a fresh wave of airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, and other parts of Lebanon, continuing an offensive that has taken out much of Hezbollah's leadership and weapons arsenal since last week. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rejected a U.S. and French-led proposal for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, vowing that the IDF would continue to hit the group with "full force and we will not stop until we achieve all our goals, first and foremost returning the residents of the north safely to their homes."

Some 60,000 residents of the Israel's Lebanon border region have been evacuated from their homes since Oct. 8, when Hezbollah began bombarding the north on a near-daily basis in solidarity with Hamas, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group that carried out a massacre in southern Israel a day earlier. According to Israel, Hezbollah had ongoing plans to conduct an Oct. 7-style attack of its own.

IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said of Nasrallah's assassination: "The message is simple, to anyone who threatens the citizens of the State of Israel, we will know how to get to them."

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