Israel’s military has announced it killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, in an airstrike on the group’s command centre in Beirut on Friday.
“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” the IDF said in a statement posted on X.
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Saturday morning that hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs should evacuate because of the danger posed by continuing strikes.
Nasrallah becomes the latest, and by far the most powerful, target to be killed by Israel in weeks of fighting with Hezbollah.
The army said that several top Hezbollah commanders were killed along with Nasrallah on Friday.
The military said it carried out an airstrike while the leadership of Hezbollah met at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.
Ali Karki, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and additional Hezbollah commanders, were also killed in the attack, the Israeli military said.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes Friday, which levelled six apartment buildings.
Israel: We will reach anyone who threatens our citizens
The chief of Israel’s army vowed on Saturday to “reach” anyone who threatens Israeli citizens.
Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said: “This is not the end of our toolbox. The message is simple, anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel — we will know how to reach them.”
A history of Hezbollah — from proxy army to Middle East power
The bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983 killed 63 people
FRANCOISE DE MULDER/ROGER VIOLLET/GETTY IMAGES
Founded in 1982, the Lebanese paramilitary group now claims to have 100,000 fighters — and has formed an uneasy partnership with Hamas against its old foe Israel.
Hezbollah’s military wing is branded a terrorist organisation by many countries but with the exception of Russia and China. America has long held the group responsible for orchestrating the devastating 1983 bombings as well as the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in 1985 and bombings against Jewish targets in Argentina.
• Read in full: Hezbollah — forged in war and revolution
Israel claims Hassan Nasrallah killed
Israel’s military announced it had killed Hezbollah’s leader in an airstrike on the group’s command centre in Beirut on Friday.
“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” the IDF said in a statement posted on X.
The announcement caps a week of a Israeli military operation that has wiped out much of the Iranian-militia’s commanders and, by some estimates, almost half of its arsenal of missiles and rockets.
In Friday’s airstrike, the Israeli air force levelled several apartment blocks that stood above Hezbollah’s command centre, after receiving intelligence that Nasrallah was present.
His death would come as a seismic setback for Hezbollah, long seen as the region’s most powerful militia and Israel’s most formidable enemy, and Iran.
Hezbollah has refrained from commenting on the strike. It has released several statements overnight announcing rocket attacks on Israel.
Israel calls on reserve soldiers as strikes continue
The aftermath of Israeli strikes on Shebaa in Lebanon
RAMIZ DALLAH/ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES
Israel maintained a heavy barrage of airstrikes against Hezbollah on Saturday morning.
The Israeli military said it was activating three battalions of reserve soldiers as Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets toward Israel.
The IDF sent two brigades to northern Israel earlier in the week to train for a possible ground invasion.
Healthcare and water ‘being rapidly depleted’
Hospitals in Beirut are “overwhelmed” and critical water pumping stations have been destroyed, a Unicef representative has said, as Israeli airstrikes continued into Saturday morning.
Ettie Higgins, deputy representative of Unicef in Lebanon, said “thousands and thousands” of people had fled southern Beirut.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Even the most basic essential services of healthcare and water are now being rapidly, rapidly depleted.
“There was already a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon given that it’s been hosting over one million refugees from Syria for over a decade, so it’s rapidly escalating into a catastrophe.”
She said 50 children had already been killed, and that she expected that figure to rise as the air strikes continued.
Beirut hospitals evacuated
Hospitals in the southern suburbs of Beirut are being evacuated following Israeli airstrikes.
Lebanon’s health ministry said patients from the Dahiyeh area would be transferred to medical centres elsewhere in Beirut and in Mount Lebanon.
More than 211,000 people have been forced to flee their homes
BILAL HUSSEIN/AP
The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah had forced at least 20 primary health care centres to shut down across Lebanon.
More than 211,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, with about 85,000 now living in shelters including public schools in the north and east of the country.
Netanyahu’s US trip was a bluff, claims Israeli media
Binyamin Netanyahu has cut his trip to New York short
ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE /ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES
Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minster, is returning to Lebanon immediately following the strikes and has cancelled his meeting in New York (writes Oliver Marsden, in Lebanon).
Israeli media is reporting that Binyamin Netanyahu’s trip to New York was a bluff to lull Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah into a false sense of security.
The plan was to persuade him to believe there would be no Israeli attack while Israel’s prime minister was in the United States.
Eight people killed and more than 100 injured
At least ten missiles were fired on Friday evening. Eight people were killed and more than 100 injured in the strike, which destroyed at least six buildings in the densely populated area (writes Oliver Marsden, in Lebanon).
There has been no official comment from Hezbollah on the strikes.
The Israeli military followed the strike with an announcement warning residents of Laylaki and two areas in Hadath, both neighbourhoods in south Beirut, to evacuate the area before follow-up attacks on those sites.
Residents shelter in Martyr’s Square
Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut became one of the first safe havens sought out by those fleeing the violence (writes Oliver Marsden, in Lebanon).
As the sun rose on Saturday morning, children slept on the concrete while mother’s watched over them. One eye on their families and one on their phones as they followed the Israeli bombardment live on the news.
Martyr’s Square has become a sanctuary for the tired and terrified
BILAL HUSSEIN/AP
Men called loved ones from the steps of Al-Amin Mosque, while migrant workers sat huddled together nearby with nowhere else to go.
The square played host to thousands of Lebanese protesters in 2019 as a revolution swept the country. Once again it is the meeting point for the residents of Beirut, only this time acting as a sanctuary for the tired and terrified.
‘After the first strike I grabbed my passport and ran’
One resident of Dahiyeh, who declined to give his name, described to The Sunday Times how after the first strike hit close to his home he grabbed his “passport and his papers and ran” (writes Oliver Marsden, in Lebanon).
“I can’t find my sister,” he said, the panic evident in his voice. “I’m looking for her but I can’t find her.” He eventually found his sister but she had been lightly injured by flying metal during the strike. Together they decided to leave the area and seek shelter elsewhere.
Dramatic video showed residents of Dahiyeh running down the streets with backpacks slung over their shoulders and their arms wrapped around pillows in a mass exodus.
As the bombardment continued the special forces of the Lebanese Army were called to create a perimeter around the US Embassy just north of the city as a precaution.
British citizens told to leave Lebanon
British citizens in Lebanon should leave the country immediately, the Foreign Office has said.
“You should take the next available flight,” officials said in a statement on Friday night. “”We are working to increase capacity and secure seats for British nationals to leave.”
Any British nationals in Lebanon should register with the Foreign Office’s website so the government knows they are in still in the country.
The Foreign Offices continues to advise against all travel to Lebanon because of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
EU foreign affairs chief reiterates calls for ceasefire
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is determined to destroy Hezbollah, the EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said as he again called for a ceasefire.
“If the interpretation of being destroyed is the same as with Hamas, then we are going to go for a long war,” Borrell said.
Borrell also expressed regret that not even the US could prevent Netanyahu from continuing military operations in Gaza and West Bank. “What we do is to put all diplomatic pressure to a ceasefire, but nobody seems to be able to stop Netanyahu,” he said. “We cannot rely just on the US. The US tried several times; they didn’t succeed,” he said.
It followed further appeals for a ceasefire from the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. “The path to diplomacy may seem difficult to see at this moment, but it is there, and in our judgement, it is necessary,” Blinken said.
Israel responds to ‘about 10 missiles from Lebanon’
Israel’s military said it had carried out further strikes this morning after detecting “about ten” missile launches from southern Lebanon.
Jets from the Israeli Air Force “attacked buildings where weapons were stored, launchers aimed at the rear of the state of Israel and military buildings where terrorists from the terrorist organisation Hezbollah were operating”, the IDF said on Twitter. The IDF said it also attacked Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa region.
Hezbollah said it had targeted Kabri in northern Israel “with a salvo of Fadi-1 rockets” in response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader targeted in strike named by Israel
Israel’s military has named Muhammad Ali Ismail, the commander of a Hezbollah missile unit in southern Lebanon, as among those killed in Friday’s airstrike on Beirut.
Ismail’s deputy and “other senior officials” were also killed. The IDF said Ali Ismail “was responsible for directing numerous terrorist attacks against the state of Israel, including the firing of rockets toward Israeli territory and the launch of a surface-to-surface missile toward central Israel on Wednesday”.
Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said: “We are still checking the results of the attack on Hezbollah’s central headquarters, which is located under civilian buildings … in an underground space. We will update as soon as we know. We know that our attack was very accurate.”
Protesters decry ‘bloodbath in Lebanon’
Demonstrators burned Israeli and US flags during protests in Iran following Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.
Thousands of people joined a gathering in Tehran’s Enghelab Square. Protesters chanted about a “bloodbath in Lebanon” and “Israel is destroyed. Lebanon is victorious” while carrying Palestinian and Hezbollah flags and portraits of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The attack targeted an area where top Hezbollah officials are often based
FADEL ITANI/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Further demonstrations were seen across Iran in Semnan, Qom, Kashan, Kermanshah, Shiraz and Bandar Abbas. Tens of thousands joined another protest in Sanaa, the rebel-held capital of Yemen.