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Israel Targets Likely Hezbollah Successor In New Beirut Attacks

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by Tyler Durden
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Update(1939ET): Israel is conducting more major airstrikes in Beirut Thursday evening. Israeli officials are now claiming that strikes last night targeted head of Hezbollah's executive committee Hashim Safi al-Din. He's been widely reported as the likely successor to take over the Shia paramilitary group after Nasrallah's killing last week.

"Safi al-Din is the leading figure to succeed Hassan Nasrallah as Hezbollah's leader. An Israeli official said Safi al-Din was in a bunker deep underground and it isn't yet clear whether he was killed in the strike," Axios is reporting.

The strikes that targeted the Safi al-Din have been described as even larger than the ones the killed Nasrallah. Casualty numbers are as yet unconfirmed. On Thursday night, Al Jazeera reports the following: 

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report that the Israeli military has blown up residential buildings northwest of Nuseirat camp.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported earlier that the military has been striking the western part of Nuseirat refugee camp on almost an hourly basis.

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At least nine people have been killed in overnight Israeli attacks on Beirut, which involved a series of rare airstrikes directly on the city center, not far from parliament building and the prime minister's office, as well as a United Nations headquarters. More strikes also rocked the southern suburb of Dayhiheh, which has been frequently hit.

The central Beirut attack targeted a building in the district of Bashoura. The Associated Press and others noticed that residents and emergency aid workers panicked also due to a strange smell filled the air in the central city area in the immediate aftermath of the bombing.

Al Jazeera reports that "Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following the attack, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs, without providing evidence." Israel's military did not comment on the claims.

Aftermath of overnight strikes on central Beirut, AFP.

Among the dead were seven members of Hezbollah's civil defense unit, the group confirmed. A prior Wednesday strike had also targeted a residence of Hezbollah member of parliament, Amin Shari. Local reports say he was not there at the time, and survived.

In ongoing fierce fighting in the south, Hezbollah claims to have mounted more attacks against invading Israeli ground forces. This comes following a bad day for the IDF on Wednesday, given it confirmed eight Israeli troop deaths, most of these during a fierce multi-pronged ambush.

Below are the latest claims of battlefield successes by Hezbollah on Thursday:

  • Hezbollah claimed to have detonated two explosive devices at dawn “when an enemy Israeli infantry force attempted to infiltrate towards the village of Maroun al-Ras” in southern Lebanon.
  • Fighters attacked Israeli soldiers with an Iranian-made Falaq missile east of the Sasa settlement in northern Israel, and a different group of soldiers with a rocket salvo west of the same settlement, it said.
  • Another attack came in the Shomera settlement of northern Israel against Israeli troops with a Falaq missile. Hezbollah also claimed two separate rocket salvos against Israeli forces – one in the Betzet settlement and another in the Avivim village in Upper Galilee.

In what regional sources are reporting as a major on-ground development, Hezbollah said detonated a large bomb as IDF troops entered the village of Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon, resulting in deaths and casualties.

Military rescue helicopters were later observed arriving in the area to recover and tend to the wounded, unverified reports say.

Hezbollah rocket attacks on Galilee in northern Israel on Thursday:

In total Hezbollah has said it has launched six different attacks on Israeli ground forces in the south by mid-afternoon. The Israeli military has meanwhile said its forces have killed some 60 Hezbollah operatives over the past day, with aerial forces also having struck over 200 targets.

At least two Lebanese national army soldiers have been reported killed at this point. News wires are also reporting that "For the first time since the war began, the Lebanese army responded to Israeli fire after a soldier was killed in an Israeli strike on an army center in Bint Jbeil, southern Lebanon."

As of Thursday afternoon, the IDF has ordered an additional 25 villages and towns in southern Lebanon to be evacuated, as the fighting expands. Israel is looking to push Hezbollah forces dozens of miles north into Lebanon, in order to create a permanent buffer zone.

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