Israel’s military announced on Saturday that Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah has been killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut the previous night, but there was no confirmation from the Lebanese armed group.
“Hassan Nasrallah is dead,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani announced on X.
Captain David Avraham, another military spokesman, also confirmed to newsmen that the Hezbollah chief had been ‘eliminated’ following strikes on the Lebanese capital on Friday.
A source close to the Iran-backed group told newsmen on condition of anonymity that contact with Nasrallah had been lost since Friday evening.
Contact with him was lost for two days and he was rumoured to have been killed during Israel’s last war with Hezbollah in 2006, the source said, adding that he later re-emerged unscathed.
There has been no official confirmation from Hezbollah about Nasrallah’s fate since the Israeli military’s announcement.
An Israeli 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.
“The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” the statement said.
“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 organization.”
Hezbollah began firing into Israel one day after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
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 around 118,000.
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Update: Hezbollah Confirms Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Death
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group on Saturday confirmed its leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed, after Israel said it had “eliminated” him in an air strike a day earlier.
“Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
The statement confirmed he was killed with other group members “following the treacherous Zionist strike on the southern suburbs” of Beirut.
In the Lebanese capital Beirut, journalists heard a passerby screaming, “Oh my God”, while women wept in the streets right after Hezbollah announced the news.
Gunfire could also be heard in Beirut, a gesture to mourn the fallen leader, a charismatic religious figure who is idolized by supporters.
Newsmen saw a woman wearing a black veil on the street who yelled: “Don’t believe them, they’re lying, Sayyed is well” — a reference to Nasrallah.
Israeli jets pounded Beirut’s south and its outskirts throughout the night into Saturday in the most intense attacks on the Hezbollah stronghold since the group and Israel last went to war in 2006.
Nasrallah had rarely been seen in public since 2006.
He was elected secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992, aged 32, after an Israeli helicopter gunship killed his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi.
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