TEL AVIV, Sept 28 (NNN-MA’AN) – The Israeli military said today that, it had killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, in an airstrike on the organisation’s underground headquarters near Beirut, yesterday.
Hezbollah has not commented on the Israeli claim, but if confirmed the death of Nasrallah would be a major escalation in Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign against the Iran-backed group over the last two weeks, which has threatened to spiral into an all-out regional war.
Fears have grown that Hezbollah’s backer, Iran, might be drawn into the fight.
Israeli intelligence agencies preliminarily determined after yesterday’s strike that Nasrallah was killed, based on the number and the size of the bombs used and information gathered from inside the group, according to five Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports.
Iranian outlet, Press TV reported, citing insiders, that Nasrallah “is in a secure location and has not been harmed by the recent Israeli airstrikes.”
Early today, after warning residents to flee, Israeli forces launched a series of new airstrikes in the same, Hezbollah-dominated area known as the Dahiya. Israel’s military said, the strikes were intended to destroy Hezbollah weapons caches. Sirens were also sounding across the border across northern Israel and some Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in a sign of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.
Lebanon’s health ministry said, at least six people were killed and more than 90 injured by the Israeli strikes last night, but the toll was expected to rise. Emergency workers were still searching through the rubble even as Israel struck again. Lebanon’s health ministry said this morning that, hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs should evacuate because of the danger posed by continuing strikes.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council last night. Ibrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said that, Israel “has opened the gates of hell against itself.”– NNN-MA’AN
