Hashem Safieddine, reportedly the probable successor of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, died together with several companions in an Israeli air raid in southern Beirut, Saudi newspaper Al Hadath reported on Saturday. Al Akhbar has said that Israel has admitted to killing Safieddine; despite this, the Israeli authorities have not come out to confirm this information up to this day. Articles in Israeli media that quoted sources in Lebanon suggested that an aerial bombardment was aimed at Safieddine in the Dahieh area of Beirut late on Friday night.
On Friday, Israeli officials said that their forces hit Hezbollah’s intelligence centers in the southern suburbs of Beirut and said they are ‘sorting out the debris.’ A US news portal said that three Knesset Officials said that Safieddine was targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut Thursday night, but the certainty of his death was still in doubt.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted a photograph of Safieddine and Nasrallah on X (formerly twitter) on Saturday and wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “Take your proxies and get out of Lebanon”. This airstrike on Safieddine comes only after Israel has been reducing most of the upper hierarchy of Hezbollah’s military command and control structure, including a previous attack that many believe killed Hassan Nasrallah on September 27.
Due to the more recent violence, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the lead-up to Friday prayers and in a very rare speech, stated that Iran and its allies would not back down from their stances. However, the Lebanese government confirmed that more than 2,000 people have died in the country over the past year, with the majority of them having perished in the past two weeks. It has gotten worse with strikes on medical care providers and facilities; the Lebanese Red Cross is not exempted, and the public hospitals that are affiliated with Hezbollah.
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