Hezbollah on Saturday confirmed that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed in an airstrike by Isreali forces on Friday.
A powerful airstrike in Beirut, dealt a huge blow to the Iran-backed group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had eliminated Nasrallah in the strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs a day earlier. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed, without saying how.
His death is not only a major blow to Hezbollah, but also to Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran’s constellation of allied groups in the Arab world.
A senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Deputy Commander Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in Israeli attacks in Beirut, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it would continue its battle against Israel “in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defence of Lebanon and its steadfast and honourable people”.
Friday’s airstrike – a succession of massively powerful blasts that left a crater at least 20 metres (65 feet) deep – shook Beirut. Israel carried out further airstrikes on the area and more widely in Lebanon on Saturday.
The Israeli military said earlier that Nasrallah was eliminated in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters beneath a residential building in Dahiyeh – a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had on Friday vowed to pound and degrade Hezbollah until its goals along Lebanon’s border is achieved.
Addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, he told world leaders at the his nation will “continue degrading Hezbollah” until it achieves its goals along the Lebanon border.
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