{"id":295696,"date":"2024-09-28T12:40:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T12:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=295696"},"modified":"2024-09-30T07:44:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T07:44:18","slug":"israel-says-it-has-killed-hezbollah-leader-hassan-nasrallah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=295696","title":{"rendered":"Israel says it has killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Beaumont and William Christou \u2013 The Guardian Sept 28, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The Israeli military has said it has killed Hezbollah\u2019s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a series of strikes on the group\u2019s underground headquarters in Beirut.<\/p>\n

The announcement by the Israel<\/a> Defense Forces (IDF) on Saturday morning came after overnight speculation about the fate of Nasrallah, following the strikes in Dahieh, a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital. The death of the Hezbollah leader, who has led the Iran-backed group for three decades, will mark a major escalation in the crisis in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Responding to the claimed assassination, Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims \u201cto stand by the people of Lebanon<\/a> and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the \u2026 wicked regime (of Israel)\u201d.<\/p>\n

Khamenei, who Reuters reported had been transferred to a secure location inside Iran<\/a>, did not mention Nasrallah in his comments. He added: \u201cThe fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront.\u201d Israeli \u201ccriminals must know that they are far too small to cause any significant damage on the strongholds of Hezbollah in Lebanon,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attack threatens to draw in Iran, Hezbollah\u2019s principal backer, which thus far has been reluctant to involve itself in the fighting with Israel.<\/p>\n

According to sources in Israel, the Israeli security cabinet had previously pulled back from plans to kill Nasrallah, but having established that he was due to attend a meeting at the command complex, approved a plan to kill him in an operation reportedly codenamed \u201cNew Order\u201d.<\/p>\n

Reports in the Israeli media said the assassination had been carried out by a squadron of F15I jets equipped with bunker-busting bombs although Israel refused to comment on claims they were US-supplied type 84 munitions.<\/p>\n

The news was initially broken by the military spokesperson Lt Col Nadav Shoshani in a brief post on X saying: \u201cHassan Nasrallah is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement issued shortly afterwards, the IDF said Nasrallah had been killed along with Hezbollah\u2019s southern front commander, Ali Karki, and other commanders attending the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing precise intelligence from the IDF and the Israeli security establishment, IAF [Israeli air force] fighter jets conducted a targeted strike on the central headquarters of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation which was located underground, embedded under a residential building in the Dahieh area of Beirut,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strike was conducted while Hezbollah\u2019s senior chain of command was operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against citizens of the state of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli military said it was on \u201chigh alert\u201d and prepared for a wider escalation.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah has yet to make a statement on Israel\u2019s claim that it had killed Nasrallah.<\/p>\n

The IDF spokesperson Shoshani later predicted that despite Nasrallah\u2019s killing, Hezbollah would continue to target Israel. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen Hezbollah carry out attacks against us for a year. It\u2019s safe to assume that they are going to continue carrying out their attacks against us, or try to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In Lebanon, residents reacted to the news of the assassination with shock, unwilling to believe Israel\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

After Israel\u2019s announcement, the streets of Beirut emptied. Storefronts in Gemayzeh \u2013 an upmarket neighbourhood in east Beirut \u2013 were mostly closed.<\/p>\n

In Dahieh one resident told the Guardian: \u201cI\u2019m in despair, I don\u2019t know what to feel.\u201d Other supporters of the group struck a different tone. \u201cThe group will go on, it\u2019s not just centred around one leader,\u201d Fatimah, a resident of Dahieh, said from her car in downtown Beirut where she has been sleeping with her husband and son since the strikes on Dahieh started last week.<\/p>\n

The second in command in the organisation, Hashem Safieddine, who could succeed Nasrallah, was reportedly also targeted in Israel\u2019s airstrike on Beirut on Friday. It is not known how the next leader of Hezbollah might govern the group and how they will choose to retaliate for Nasrallah\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n

The IDF\u2019s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Saturday that the elimination of Nasrallah was \u201cnot the end of our toolbox\u201d, indicating that more strikes were planned. He said the strike targeting the Hezbollah leadership was the result of a long period of preparation.<\/p>\n

The military said it was mobilising additional reserve soldiers as tensions escalated with Lebanon, activating three battalions of reserve soldiers to serve across Israel. It sent two brigades to northern Israel earlier in the week to train for a possible ground invasion.<\/p>\n

Shortly before the strike, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed during a speech at the UN general assembly<\/a> to keep fighting in Lebanon, crushing hopes that Israel would agree to a 21-day truce proposed by the US and France.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that is true of the entire Middle East,\u201d Netanyahu said in New York.<\/p>\n

Among Hezbollah\u2019s constituents, Nasrallah was viewed with a prophet-like fervour, seen as the liberator of south Lebanon from Israel\u2019s 18-year occupation. At Hezbollah rallies, supporters chant \u201cLabaik ya Hussein <\/em>and Labaik ya Nasrallah\u201d<\/em> \u2013 \u201cO Hussein, O Nasrallah, I am here for you\u201d \u2013 shouting their devotion to Hussein, a key figure in Shia Islam, and Nasrallah.<\/p>\n

When Nasrallah spoke in televised addresses, supporters would tune in for guidance on political, spiritual and cultural issues. Many Lebanese attribute the failure of the 2019 revolution to a speech by Nasrallah, when he told his supporters it was time to get off the streets, depriving the protest movement of its non-sectarian character.<\/p>\n

Whoever replaces the enigmatic former secretary general will have to deal with an organisation that over the last year, has lost almost every senior military leader and is on the back foot from the Israeli bombing campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The death also throws the fate of the Lebanese state into question. Hezbollah is deeply embedded in the state, controlling a key share of parliament and exercising influence over several ministries, such as the directorate of general security. Lebanon\u2019s foreign policy is largely dictated by the group, particularly when it comes to neighbouring states such as Israel.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah began firing into Israel one day after Hamas\u2019s 7 October attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Israel has in recent days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people and displaced about 118,000.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been confirmed that Nasrallah has been killed in an Israeli air strike, reportedly using U.S.-supplied bunker busting munitions. While Hezbollah has undoubtedly suffered a blow this wouldn’t have happened without unquestioning U.S. support for Israel <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=295696"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295706,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295696\/revisions\/295706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=295696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=295696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=295696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}