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Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been killed, the Iran-backed group said on Saturday, confirming his death after the Israeli military said it had eliminated him in an airstrike in Beirut the day before.
His death marks a devastating blow to Hezbollah, as it reels from an intense campaign of Israeli attacks. It is also a huge blow to Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran’s constellation of allied groups in the Arab world.
An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut apartment block killed a senior Hezbollah leader and about a dozen other members of the militant group, Israel’s military said Saturday as Lebanon raised the attack’s death toll to 37, including women and children.
The airstrike during the Friday afternoon rush leveled the eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood in southern Beirut as Hezbollah members were meeting in the basement, according to Israel.
Hundreds of handheld pagers exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon and parts of Syria on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, government and Hezbollah officials said. The explosions, which appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack, were attributed to Israel by Lebanese officials. The Israeli military has declined to comment on the incident.
Hezbollah has been involved in daily exchanges of fire with Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been forced to evacuate their homes due to the conflict, reports the Associated Press.
At least five Turkish-backed militants were killed in an infiltration operation by Kurdish forces near the northern Syrian city of Afrin, a war monitor reported on Saturday.
“The Afrin Liberation Forces [HRE] carried out an infiltration operation on military positions belonging to the [Syrian] National Army factions loyal to Turkey on the axes of Anab and Maryamin in Afrin countryside, northwest of Aleppo,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor.
Turkish security forces have “neutralized” 17 PKK/YPG terrorists in recent operations in northern Iraq and northern Syria, as reported by Anadolu Agency, citing the Turkish National Defense Ministry.
According to the ministry, 15 of the terrorists were targeted in the Gara and Metina regions, as well as in the Claw-Lock operation zone of northern Iraq. The remaining two terrorists were neutralized in Manbij, northern Syria.