The Israeli military has announced that it had killed Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine during an Israeli attack in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday, according to international news outlets. Hezbollah has not confirmed Safieddine’s death.
After Israeli airstrikes near Beirut’s airport on October 4, Hezbollah officials reported losing contact with Safieddine. U.S. media then cited Israeli sources indicating he had been the target of Israel’s attacks.
The IDF stated on Tuesday that Safieddine, along with Ali Hussein Hazima, who was identified as the commander of Hezbollah’s Intelligence Headquarters, had been killed in a strike on the group’s main intelligence facility in Beirut. The IDF accused Safieddine of having orchestrated “terrorist attacks against the State of Israel for years” and participating in Hezbollah’s “central decision-making processes.”
In a speech during the summer in Beirut, Safieddine spoke about Hezbollah’s approach to leadership succession. “In our resistance, when any leader is martyred, another takes up the flag and goes on with new, certain, strong determination,” he stated.
Israel has escalated its actions against Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border tensions linked to Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.
According to Lebanon’s health ministry, over the past year, at least 2,464 people in Lebanon have been killed and nearly 12,000 have been injured in Israeli strikes.
During the same period, Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets and drones at Israel, resulting in at least 59 fatalities in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights, according to Reuters.
Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader Hassan Nasrallah after an airstrike that hit the group’s leadership headquarters in southern Beirut on September 27, after Israel claimed it had assassinated him.
The body of Nasrallah was recovered from the site of that Israeli air attack, a medical source and a security source told Reuters on Sunday. According to the source, the body had “no direct wounds” and it appeared that the cause of death was “blunt trauma from the force of the blast.”