Israel attacks Lebanon: New attacks target Beirut’s southern suburbs

“Israel carried out an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburb,” said the Lebanese official, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a “violent raid carried out by Israeli warplanes”, adding that ambulances had rushed to the area of Beirut’s southern suburbs.

A witness said a rocket hit a building, which instantly collapsed.

The latest attack came days after a similar strike killed the group’s powerful leader Hassan Nasrallah, sending tensions soaring amid intensive Israeli strikes on the country’s east, south and south Beirut.

‘More than 20’ Hezbollah members killed 

The Israeli military said the strike that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah this week in Beirut also “eliminated” more than 20 other members of the Lebanese armed group.

“More than 20 other terrorists of varying ranks, who were present at the underground headquarters in Beirut located beneath civilian buildings, and were managing Hezbollah’s terrorist operations against the state of Israel, were also eliminated,” the military said in a statement that listed some of them.

A separate statement later said it had hit approximately 45 Hezbollah targets in the area of Kafra in southern Lebanon. Among those targets struck were weapons storage facilities and infrastructure sites belonging to the group, it said.

The body of former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been found in the wreckage of an Israeli air strike in Beirut, CNN reported, citing a Lebanese security source. The report stated that the corpse was intact.

Another source stated that Nasrallah’s body had no visible wounds and that it appeared the cause of death was blunt trauma from the force of the blast.

On Friday, Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death after the Israeli military stated he had been killed in an air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Iran-backed group’s main bastion.

Some Israelis celebrated his killing, while in Lebanon, his supporters’ disbelief gave way to anguished mourning. Around the region, leaders condemned the killing while some Hezbollah allies vowed vengeance, fuelling fears of more violence in the Middle East after nearly a year of war in Gaza.

“Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah… has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Netanyahu says Israel ‘settled the score’

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel had “settled the score” for the killing of Israelis and citizens of other countries, including Americans.

He said that as long as Nasrallah was alive, he could have “quickly restored the capabilities we had eroded from Hezbollah” in a series of recent operations.

“So, I gave the order – and Nasrallah is no longer with us,” he said, adding that his country was on the cusp of “what appears to be a historic turning point” in the fight against its enemies.

Iran, which arms and finances Hezbollah, said a senior member of its Revolutionary Guards Corps was killed in the same strike. A source close to Hezbollah said the group’s top commander in south Lebanon, Ali Karake, had also died.

Crime ‘will not go unanswered’

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday the killing in Lebanon of a senior Revolutionary Guards general in an Israeli strike, alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, “will not go unanswered.”

“This horrible crime of the aggressor Zionist regime will not go unanswered, and the diplomatic apparatus will also use all its political, diplomatic, legal and international capacities to pursue the criminals and their supporters,” he said, according to a foreign ministry statement.

‘Largest’ wave of displacement ever

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Sunday said his country could be witnessing its largest wave of displacement ever amid intense Israeli air strikes.

“It is the largest displacement movement that may have happened… in Lebanon,” Mikati told reporters, after saying up to one million people could be displaced by the Israeli attacks.

Top Hezbollah official killed in Saturday strike

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had killed a senior Hezbollah official in an air strike on a Beirut suburb the day before, as it continued to target the Lebanese armed group.

The military said Nabil Qaouq, a member of Hezbollah’s central council, was “struck and eliminated” on Saturday, just a day after the group’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in a similar strike.

Raids on ‘dozens’ of Hezbollah targets

The Israeli military said on Sunday it conducted strikes against “dozens” of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, two days after an air strike killed the group’s chief Hassan Nasrallah.

The Israel Defense Forces “attacked dozens of terrorist targets in the territory of Lebanon in the last few hours,” the army said in a statement on Telegram.

Iran calls for emergency UN meeting

Iran on Saturday called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in protest at the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon, according to a letter to the Council sent to AFP.

In the letter, Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called on the Council to “take immediate and decisive action to stop Israel’s ongoing aggression and prevent… from dragging the region into full-scale war.”

Biden urges ‘ceasefire’

US President Joe Biden on Saturday called for a ceasefire after Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon – part of an extended bombing campaign against the strongholds of the Iran-backed militant group.

“It’s time for a ceasefire,” Biden said in response to a reporter asking whether an Israeli ground invasion was inevitable.

33 killed, 195 wounded in Israeli strikes

Lebanon said that Israeli strikes had killed 33 people and wounded 195 others in the country Saturday.

“The Israeli aggression against Lebanese regions has resulted in 33 deaths today and has wounded 195 people”, the country’s health ministry said in a statement on the sixth day of an Israeli bombing campaign against the strongholds of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.