Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, is dead, Israel says.
Israel’s military announced on Saturday evening (AEST) that Nasrallah had been killed in a strike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, on Friday.
“Hassan Nasrallah is dead,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani wrote on X.
Captain David Avraham, another military spokesman, also confirmed to the AFP news agency that the Hezbollah chief had been “eliminated” following strikes Friday on Beirut.
A source close to the Lebanese group meanwhile told AFP on condition of anonymity that contact with Nasrallah had been lost since Friday evening.
Contact with the group leader had been lost for two days and he had been rumoured killed during Israel’s last war with Hezbollah in 2006, the source said, adding that he later re-emerged unscathed.
A military statement said the strikes also killed Ali Karake, who the statement identified as commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, and an unspecified number of other Hezbollah commanders.
“During Hassan Nasrallah’s 32-year reign as the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, he was responsible for the murder of many Israeli civilians and soldiers, and the planning and execution of thousands of terrorist activities,” the statement said.
“He was responsible for directing and executing terrorist attacks around the world in which civilians of various nationalities were murdered. Nasrallah was the central decision-maker and the strategic leader of the organisation.”
Hezbollah began firing on Israel one day after a 7 October attack by Hamas-led militants on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
Militant killed 1,200 people and took about 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local health authority, and plunged the enclave into
Israel has over the past days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people and displaced around 118,000.
