A senior Hezbollah official and likely successor to Hassan Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine, was targeted in a powerful Israeli airstrike in Beirut, multiple reports have suggested.
Safieddine, widely viewed as the future leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, is thought to have been attending a high-level meeting in an underground bunker at the time of the strike.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have not officially confirmed the operation, and Hezbollah has remained silent.
However, the strike was one of the heaviest in Beirut since Israel’s killing of Nasrallah, according to The New York Times.
The bombardment took place late on Thursday night, causing significant destruction and rattling buildings across the Lebanese capital.
The Axios news outlet, citing Lebanese media, reported that this strike was far more intense than the one that killed Nasrallah. The number of casualties remains unclear.
Safieddine, designated a terrorist by the US State Department in 2017, is a key figure in Hezbollah’s political wing and serves on its Jihad Council, which oversees military operations.
A cousin of Nasrallah, he is considered Hezbollah’s ‘number two’ and holds close ties to Iran’s regime.
In addition to the targeting of Safieddine, Israel claims to have killed another senior Hezbollah official, Mohammed Anisi, who was allegedly involved in the development of precision-guided missiles. Anisi’s death came in a separate strike on Hezbollah’s intelligence branch in Beirut.
A series of explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday, killing several and marking Israel’s intensifying offensive against Hezbollah.
Neither Hezbollah nor the IDF has commented on these developments.
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