Israeli airstrike in Beirut targeted Hezbollah leader, officials say
BEIRUT – A massive Israeli airstrike leveled several residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday evening in what Israel’s military said was an attack aimed at the “central headquarters” of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group.
Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, was the target of the strike, according to a person familiar with information Israel provided later to the United States, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive matter.
Early Saturday, Israel carried out more strikes near Beirut, and spokesman Daniel Hagari warned that warplanes were monitoring the city’s international airport. “We will not allow hostile flights to land at the airport in Beirut, it is intended for civilian flights,” he said in a statement.
The strike targeting Nasrallah included several munitions that could be heard in thundering succession across the city at about 6:15 p.m. local time, followed a short time later by the wail of ambulances. The attack left multiple craters and a mountain of debris that firefighters and other rescue workers, using heavy machinery, struggled for hours to shift. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health released a preliminary toll Friday evening, saying at least six people were dead and 91 others injured.
But it was too early to tell the real toll, Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s health minister, said in a text message. Four to six buildings were “completely demolished,” he added. “We expect fatalities to be high if there were people inside their apartments.” At least two children were pulled from the rubble Friday night, television footage showed, appearing conscious while being rushed to ambulances.
The strike occurred soon after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed during a bellicose address to the U.N. General Assembly that his country would continue military operations in Lebanon – in defiance of calls by the United States and other governments for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“We are still gathering information, but I can tell you that the United States had no knowledge of or involvement in any IDF military action in Beirut today,” National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the attack and Israel did not publicly say who it was targeting. Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, said the strike “proves that the Israeli enemy does not care” about the cease-fire calls, and implored the international community to stop “the war of extermination” he said Israel was waging against his country.
Since it began Monday with a ferocious aerial barrage, Israel’s military operation against Hezbollah has killed more than 700 people in Lebanon and set off a spiraling humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by airstrikes, sheltering in schools, hotels or under trees in parks, as hospitals have filled with injured people.
Israel has said it is determined to end Hezbollah attacks that began Oct. 8 and have displaced tens of thousands of residents in the north of the country.
Hezbollah has suffered a series of withering blows and breaches of its intelligence network, including an apparent Israeli attack using exploding pagers and two-way radios used by the militant group, and the killing of several Hezbollah commanders in a matter of days.
An Israeli official, who spoke to reporters Friday on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, said Israel viewed the degrading of Hezbollah and the further decapitation of its leadership as critical and was deeply skeptical of the U.S. desire for a cease-fire.
Still, the group has continued to fire hundreds of rockets and other projectiles toward Israel, an assault it says it will stop only when a cease-fire is reached in the Gaza Strip.
Even if Nasrallah had survived Friday’s strike, the attack marks a significant expansion of Israel’s campaign against that group, according to Yoram Schweitzer, head of the program on terrorism and low-intensity conflict at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
“It’s a signal that Israel is not reluctant to go after the higher echelons of the organization,” he said.
Israel began to signal that its campaign against Hezbollah had expanded in July when it targeted one of the militant group’s senior commanders, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Previously, the low-grade conflict between Hezbollah and Israel was largely confined to the border region in southern Lebanon.
Since then, the tempo of strikes targeting Hezbollah’s senior-most ranks has only increased. Schweitzer said while Hezbollah has weathered leadership deaths before, losing so many members who hail from the group’s early days will have a cumulative impact.
“It’s not devastating yet, but the organization is badly damaged,” he said.
A former senior Lebanese security official said that if Nasrallah was at the site of Friday’s strike, he doubted Israel had used signals intelligence to place him there, due to the group’s stepped-up security measures. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter.
Hezbollah has recently tightened security, including in Beirut’s southern suburbs, after recent strikes targeted other senior members of the group there, he said. And the former official said the group’s top leaders have ceased using all electronic communication equipment except Hezbollah’s hard-wired landline.
A person close to Hezbollah said the strike should be considered a “turning point in the war.”
“We are facing either the assassination of Sayyed Nasrallah, or his survival,” the person said, adding that he did not have information on the Hezbollah leader’s fate. But either way, red lines had been crossed, including with the massive Israeli attack on the Beirut suburbs, an area Hezbollah had sought to keep away from the conflict as it battled Israel’s military along the frontier.
“This means heading towards a huge war. Hezbollah can no longer deal in a patient or tolerant manner,” the person said.
A 29-year-old resident who lives near Friday’s blast site said he and his wife thought it was a sonic boom at first, but the explosions continued. “My wife started having a panic attack,” said the resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons. Following the smoke plumes, he rode his moped to the site.
“The buildings were completely wiped away,” he said. Someone ran past him carrying a wounded person. A massive crater at the site was about 50 feet deep, he estimated.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser with the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, said while Hezbollah had an obligation to “take feasible precautions to protect civilians from the effect of the attack” – including by not intentionally locating command structures under apartment buildings – that did not relieve Israel of its own laws of war obligations when it came to Friday’s strike.
“Even if Nasrallah was a lawful target, Israel would have to consider proportionality – whether the expected harm to civilians would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated,” he said. “Israel would also have its own obligations to take feasible precautions to avoid or at least minimize harm to civilians.”
Ahead of the strikes early Saturday, Israel issued a forced displacement order on X to residents of certain districts in the southern suburbs, telling them to vacate their buildings. “You are located near Hezbollah interests,” the message said. “For your safety and the safety of your loved ones and family members, you are forced to evacuate these buildings immediately and stay away from them,” it said.
The warning – with colored maps showing areas Israel intended to strike – recalled similar Israeli orders from Gaza that have sent Palestinians on never-ending searches for shelter across the enclave. Videos posted on social media showed similar scenes in the Beirut suburbs Friday, as residents ran through the streets, looking for somewhere safe.
Britain’s embassy in Beirut issued a statement Friday night on X telling its nationals in Lebanon to “leave now.”
“You should take the next available flight,” the statement said, adding that the embassy was working to “increase capacity and secure seats for British nationals to leave.”
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Abbie Cheeseman in Beirut, Meg Kelly and Imogen Piper in Washington, and John Hudson in New York contributed to this report.
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