Hassan Nasrallah obit

Hezbollah confirms Israel killed longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah; Israel on alert for retaliation

 

He was not on the list.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah confirmed Saturday that its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had been killed in an Israeli air raid the evening before, even as Israel pressed ahead with a new round of punishing airstrikes and the region appeared to reel closer to all-out war.

The announcement came hours after Israel’s military declared that it had killed the 64-year-old Nasrallah, who helped found Hezbollah and had led the Iranian-backed group for three decades, in a devastating strike Friday evening in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.

For a full 24 hours after Friday's massive air raid, Israeli warplanes continued to pummel Hezbollah-dominated neighborhoods on the city’s southern outskirts, leaving the Lebanese capital shrouded in choking smoke and lending apocalyptic air to the open-air encampments that sprang up overnight. 

Israel was on high alert for retaliation and placed restrictions on large public gatherings. At the same time, it vowed more strikes, with its military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, declaring in a video message that Israel aimed to destroy Hezbollah.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, sought to quell any further escalation. The Pentagon said in a statement Saturday that Lebanon had been the subject of two separate discussions between Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Friday.

Austin "stressed that the United States is determined to prevent Iran and Iranian-backed partners and proxies from exploiting the situation or expanding the conflict," the statement said.

In Beirut, thousands who fled devastated areas prepared to spend a second night outdoors, huddling where they could in parks, squares and on walkways near the seafront promenade.

The death of Nasrallah represents the most staggering blow yet dealt to the Iranian-backed group by Israel, which over a span of nearly two weeks turned a low-level campaign of retaliatory cross-border strikes into an all-out effort to decapitate the group.

The Israeli military initially disclosed the death in a terse statement posted on social media.

“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” it declared.

Later, it posted a graphic depicting 11 high-ranking members of Hezbollah’s military chain of command. Ten had the word “eliminated” beside their picture, including Nasrallah.

Hezbollah responded with defiance, sending a heavy barrage of rockets across the border into Israel. The Israeli military reported no casualties from what it said were at least 90 projectiles fired mainly at the country's north.

In Beirut, the wave of Israeli strikes caused widespread panic, with thousands of people trudging with backpacks, duffel bags, roller suitcases and pet cages as they fled their homes in the the densely populated suburb of Dahieh and the nearby Burj al Barajneh refugee camp.

Khaled Mustafa, a 45-year-old Syrian tailor from Aleppo who lived with his family for the last nine years in Haret Hreik, a neighborhood with many Hezbollah administrative offices, sat cross-legged in the shade of a palm tree on a sidewalk overlooking the Mediterranean. After Friday evening's raid, he left his apartment without taking any belongings.

“I sent my family back to Syria last night. Eight people. I’m alone here,” Mustafa said. Though he did not feel safe returning to Syria, a country embroiled in a civil war since 2011, it was still better than being in Dahieh, he said.

“Where can I go? What can I do? Sit on the streets here with no food, no water? Is this good?”

Hezbollah posted on its official social media channels a flier with phone numbers that could facilitate transportation to Syria for those wanting to leave Lebanon.

A drive through Dahieh revealed a ghost town, with a few cars and scooters racing through abandoned thoroughfares, pausing at columns of smoke rising from the bowels of attack sites before they sped off.

Even Hezbollah security officials, normally a constant presence on the streets here, were scarce, with only a few stragglers posted near stricken areas. Checkpoints normally manned by Lebanese army soldiers stood empty.

At the site of the wrecked residential compound that had overlaid the targeted underground headquarters, black smoke still belched from the basement level.

“After this, how can we feel anything?” asked a 26-year-old Hezbollah security man who identified himself only as Ziyad.

His companion Zain, another 26-year-old, appeared almost tearful, saying: “The future is gone.”

According to the Lebanese health ministry, Friday's strike killed six people and injured more than 90 others. Even before the latest round of airstrikes, the ministry said more than 720 people had been killed in Lebanon over the previous week.

The ministry also said in an update on Saturday that Dahieh hospitals were to be evacuated, adding that medical facilities in other parts of the city would suspend non-urgent cases until the end of next week.

Hezbollah has long been viewed as Israel’s top regional adversary. The group began a campaign of cross-border attacks almost immediately after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel last Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and seizing around 250 hostages.

Over the last 11 months, parallel to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Israel and Hezbollah engaged in an escalating series of strikes, mainly confined to the frontier region and always falling short of full-scale conflict.

On both sides of the border, tens of thousands fled their homes — some 90,000 Lebanese were displaced from the country’s south, and about 60,000 were driven from northern Israeli communities.

But Israel’s calculation changed in recent weeks, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying his government would make the ability of northern residents to return home a formal war objective. In the days following, Israel staged a two-day wave of detonations with booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, followed by intensive airstrikes and targeted pursuit of the group’s top leadership.

Analysts said Nasrallah’s death represents a body blow to Hezbollah, but not a fatal one — particularly if Iran continues to train, supply and arm it.

“The root of the organization remains, in the sense that there is still the narrative of the belief in the cause,” said Mohamad Hage Ali, a Hezbollah expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center. “I fail to see how the core organization would just go away and sit at home after this.”

Hezbollah, he said, can “continue to cause harm to the Israelis in the next phase,” especially in the event of a ground incursion. Earlier this week, the Israeli military sent two brigades to the country’s north to train for such a potential scenario, and said additional reservists have been mobilized.

Others, though, saw the latest Israeli strikes as a decisive moment.

Analyst Kobi Michael, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, called Nasrallah’s death a “game changer.” Without him, “the entire organizational framework of Hezbollah is harmed in a very significant manner,” he told reporters.

Nasrallah was not the only top Hezbollah leader to die in Friday's strike. Ali Karki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front and other commanders were also killed, the Israeli military said.

And Iran, chief sponsor of Hezbollah and other anti-Israel paramilitary forces in the region, was also caught up in Friday's strike. Iran's official IRNA news agency said Saturday that Abbas Nilforushan, a prominent general in its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, had been killed as well.

On Saturday, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the “Zionist entity” — a reference to Israel — and said that what he called the resistance, a coalition of Iranian regional proxies, would prevail.

That encompasses forces including Hezbollah, the Palestinian groups Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthi rebels in Yemen, various Syrian and Iraqi militias, and the Syrian government.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East expert and former envoy to the region, said Nasrallah's killing could force Hezbollah, Iran and perhaps Hamas to a decision point.

"Whether it leads to escalation and regional war or deescalation and transactional diplomacy isn't yet clear," he wrote on X.

Hamas, still locked in combat with Israel in Gaza, sent condolences to Hezbollah. It said the deaths of Nasrallah and other commanders only left it and allied groups "more valiant, stronger, and more determined to continue the confrontation."