Israel’s military said Thursday it had hit Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in the Lebanese capital Beirut, as reports emerged that Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was targeted during airstrikes in the Dahieh suburb.
This comes as Israeli troops had started “ground raids” into parts of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah, after days of bombing of areas across the country where the group holds sway. In Beirut, the Israeli strikes were aimed at an underground bunker meeting of senior Hezbollah leaders, including Safieddine, The New York Times reported.
Nasrallah successor Targeted
Safieddine, who oversees military operations as head of the Iran-backed group’s executive council, is widely regarded as the heir to Nasrallah, who was killed in an earlier Israeli airstrike that also targeted dozens of leaders of the Iran-backed group. He was designated a terrorist by the US State Department in 2017 and is a cousin of Nasrallah.
Late Thursday, Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s south Beirut stronghold, in one of the most violent raids since the country intensified its bombardment campaign last week. Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said “More than 10 consecutive strikes have been recorded so far, in one of the strongest raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli war on Lebanon”. The strikes echoed to mountain regions outside Beirut, the NNA said.
Hamas’s Zahi Yaser Oufi
Separately, in a joint counterterrorism operation, the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency eliminated Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, the head of the Hamas terrorist network in Tulkarm on Thursday. The Israeli Air Force conducted an intelligence-based strike in the Tulkarm area, where Oufi was known for planning and leading an attempted car-bombing attack in Ateret on September 2.
He was responsible for supplying weapons to various terrorists in the region and orchestrating several other terror attacks aimed at communities in Judea and Samaria, as well as the Israeli home front. Oufi was reportedly in the process of planning a new attack in the immediate future. He was also involved in numerous significant attacks against Israeli civilians.
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