Israel strikes ‘dozens’ of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon after Nasrallah killing

JERUSALEM – Israel said on Sept 29 it was carrying out new air raids against “dozens” of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, after dealing the Iran-backed group a seismic blow by killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah’s killing and the past week’s waves of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon have plunged the tiny Mediterranean country and the wider region into fear of even more violence to come.

Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border strikes on Israeli troops a day after its Palestinian ally

Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023,

triggering war in the Gaza Strip.

Nearly a year later, Israel announced a shift in its focus to battling Hezbollah on its northern front with Lebanon.

Hezbollah confirmed on Sept 28 that its leader was killed in an Israeli strike a day earlier on Beirut’s southern suburbs, dealing a massive blow to the group he had led for decades.

On Sept 29, the group said Ali Karaki, one of its remaining top military commanders, was also killed in the massive air strike that killed Nasrallah.

The Israeli military announced on the same day that more than 20 “terrorists of varying ranks” were actually killed along with Nasrallah.

They include Nabil Kaouk, a member of Hezbollah’s central council; Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, director of Nasrallah’s security unit; Samir Tawfiq Dib, an adviser to Nasrallah; and Abed al-Amir Muhammad Sablini, head of Hezbollah’s force build-up.

Nasrallah’s killing marks a sharp escalation in nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel, and risks plunging the whole region into a wider war.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said the strikes on the densely populated area also left 55 people dead, while thousands of others have fled their homes in the neighbourhood.

“I can’t describe my shock at this announcement... We all started crying,” Ms Maha Karit said in Beirut after Nasrallah’s death.

Israel continued to pound Lebanon on Sept 29, with the military saying it “attacked dozens of terrorist targets in the territory of Lebanon in the last few hours”.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported a string of raids in and around the city of Baalbek in the east, with “factories, warehouses” and residential areas among the targets.

An air strike on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley killed Mohammad Dahrouj, a senior figure in the Sunni Jemaah Islamiyah group, according to two security sources.

At least six people were killed in a strike on a house in the north-eastern Hermel region, the agency reported, while an emergency response group affiliated with the Amal Movement, a Hezbollah ally, said five of its rescuers were killed in the south.

Hezbollah said its fighters launched “a volley of Fadi-1” rockets at an Israeli base in the Golan Heights early on Sept 29.

The Israeli military reported “approximately eight” launches from Lebanon that fell in unpopulated areas near the Israeli-annexed territory.

The military has attacked hundreds of Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon since Sept 28, it said, as it seeks to disable the group’s military operations and infrastructure. Israel has raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.

Following Nasrallah’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country had “settled the score” for the killing of Israelis and citizens of other nations, including Americans.

‘Unjust bloodshed’

Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah, enjoying cult status among his Shi’ite Muslim supporters.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “His elimination makes the world a safer place.”

But Iranian First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref denounced the “unjust bloodshed” and threatened that Nasrallah’s killing will bring about Israel’s “destruction”.

Hamas condemned Nasrallah’s killing as a “cowardly terrorist act”.

Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Syria all declared public mourning, while Yemen’s Houthi rebels said they fired a missile at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sept 28, hoping to hit it as Mr Netanyahu returned from a trip to New York.

US President Joe Biden – whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier – said Nasrallah’s death was a “measure of justice”, while Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is running to replace Mr Biden in the White House, called Nasrallah “a terrorist with American blood on his hands”.

Iran called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in protest at Nasrallah’s killing.

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

Analysts said Nasrallah’s death leaves Hezbollah under pressure to deliver a response.

“Either we see an unprecedented reaction by Hezbollah... or this is total defeat,” said Mr Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group think-tank.

Mass displacement

More than 700 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, according to its Health Ministry figures, since the bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds began earlier in September.

Strikes on Sept 28 killed 33 and wounded 195, the ministry said.

Most of the deaths in Lebanon happened on Sept 23, the deadliest day of violence since the country’s 1975 to 1990 civil war.

UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said “well over 200,000 people are displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Syria.

Hundreds of families spent the night leading into Sept 28 outdoors as air strikes pounded south Beirut.

“I didn’t even pack any clothes, I never thought we would leave like this and suddenly find ourselves on the streets,” south Beirut resident Rihab Naseef, 56, told AFP.

Meanwhile, air strikes of unknown origin in eastern Syria killed 12 pro-Iran fighters and wounded a large number of people, a war monitor said on Sept 29.

The strikes, in and around the city of Deir Ezzor, and near the border with Iraq, were not immediately claimed but had targeted military positions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Israel’s ‘right to remove this threat’

Mr Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until the border with Lebanon is secured.

“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes (safely),” he said.

Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink.

Hamas’s Oct 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,586 in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable. AFP