Middle East: Hezbollah's Nasrallah dead in Israeli airstrike

The Palestinian group Hamas said it was mourning the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and described the Israeli strike that killed him as a "heinous crime [with] dangerous repercussions" for regional stability. 

"Crimes and assassination by the occupation will only increase the determination and the insistence of the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon to go forward with all their might, bravery and pride on the footsteps of the martyrs ... and pursue the path of resistance until victory and the dismissal of the occupation," Hamas said in a statement.

The group also reiterated its "absolute solidarity" with Hezbollah.

Yemen's Houthis, which like Hamas and Hezbollah is also backed by Iran, said it too was mourning Nasrallah's death.

"The resistance will not be broken, and the Jihadist spirit of the Mujahideen brothers in Lebanon and on all fronts of support will grow stronger and bigger," the group said in a statement, adding that it continued to seek the "disappearance of the Israeli enemy." 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Israeli government of committing a "genocide" in Lebanon following the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. 

Erdogan, in a post on social media platform X, claimed that "Lebanon and the Lebanese people are the latest target of a policy of genocide, occupation and invasion carried out by Israel since October 7."

Erdogan expressed his solidarity with the Lebanese people and government, while calling on the Islamic world to show a more "determined" stance against Israel. Erdogan did not name Nasrallah in his post. 

Israel said on Saturday that Hassan Nasrallah, and the other senior Hezbollah members killed with him, were "legitimate military targets under international law."

"Nasrallah was one of the greatest enemies of the State of Israel of all time... his elimination makes the world a safer place," Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on the media platform X.

"We continue, even at this very moment, to strike, eliminate and kill the commanders of the Hezbollah organization, and we will continue to do so," he added.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, called Nasrallah "the murderer of thousands of Israelis and foreign citizens."

In a statement directed to the people of Lebanon, he said: "Our war is not with you. It's time for change." 

"To our enemies I say: We are strong and determined," Gallant added.

A senior general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), 58-year-old Abbas Nilforushan, was killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah by an Israeli strike on Friday, according to Iranian state media.     

Nilforushan "was killed in Israel's attack on Lebanon that assassinated the Hezbollah chief," the government-funded Islamic Repubic News Agency reported. 

The US government has said that Nilforushan was the deputy commander of operations for the IRGC. He was also involved in backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war and he served in the Iran-Iraq war.   

The death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike is a new challenge for the European Union, according to Jack Parrock, DW's correspondent in Brussels.

There will be neither "celebration" nor "sadness" across the European capitals over the death of Nasrallah, but European leaders will be thinking about what to do in this situation, he said.

"From the EU perspective, Hezbollah's military wing is under sanctions, but the political wing is not under the EU sanctions," Parrock added.

"There has been a consistent cause for de-escalation in the EU... but they will now be questioning how to do that," he said, adding that since the October 7 terror attack on Israel, the EU has struggled to assert its influence, especially on the Israeli government.

Lebanon's Hezbollah has confirmed that its leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike, while pledging to continue its "holy war" against Israel.

"Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years," the Iran-backed militia said in a statement.

The statement says Hezbollah vows to "continue the holy war against the enemy and in support of Palestine."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on Muslims to help fight Israel, saying that Lebanon's Hezbollah would play a major role in deciding the fate of the Middle East region.

In a statement that did not mention the status of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah despite Israeli claims to have killed him, Khamenei said Muslims should "stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah" in the fight against the "wicked regime (of Israel)." 

"The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront," state media reported him as saying.

"The massacre of the defenseless people in Lebanon once again revealed the ferocity of the Zionist rabid dog to everyone and proved the short-sighted and stupid policy of the leaders of the usurping regime," Khamenei said.

Regional officials briefed by Tehran have told Reuters news agency that Khamenei has been transferred to a secure location in Iran under heightened security.
 

The reported death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is a "natural progression" in the conflict between the Iran-backed group and Israel, according to Makram Rabah, assistant professor of history at the American University of Beirut.

"They [Hezbollah] have failed to understand the world has changed," Rabah told DW. 

"I think this idea that Hezbollah cannot be destroyed is something that was defeated in the streets of Beirut," he said. 

Rabah said recent events had shown that the group is more vulnerable than some analysts have been saying, with many of its leaders dead or in hiding, meaning a lot of attacks by Hezbollah are "more or less individual initiatives."

He warned that Hezbollah's backers, Iran, remained the leading danger. 

"Hezbollah is only a manifestation of Iran, and if left alone, Iran can go back to being a spoiler in the region."

"If we do not address the elephant in the room, which is Iran, this will only be one episode in a series of other chapters that can only bring more deaths and destruction to the entire region as well as to the international community," he said. 

The Israeli military says it expects Hezbollah to continue its attacks on Israel despite reportedly losing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

"We hope this will change Hezbollah's actions," Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters after the IDF said it had killed Nasrallah.

But, he said, "It's safe to assume that they are going to continue carrying out their attacks against us or try to." 

"So are we ready for a wider escalation? Yes. We've been in a wider escalation, a multi-front war, for a year. Our forces are on high alert, our intelligence is up and looking for these types of threats," he said.

Israel's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said Israel, too, would continue its attacks on the Iran-backed militia even after Nasrallah's death.

Halevi said the killing of Nasrallah was "not the end of our toolbox."

"The message to all those who threaten the citizens of the state of Israel is simple: We will know how to reach them. In the north, in the south and in more distant places," he said. 

Hezbollah itself has yet to issue any statement on the status of Nasrallah.

 

Hassan Nasrallah, 64, whom Israel says was killed in an airstrike on Beirut on Friday, became the leader of Hezbollah in 1992 after its former head and co-founder, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by Israel.

He had long been a member the group, which was formed to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and became its leader shortly after his return from a brief period of religious studies in Iran.

During his leadership, Hezbollah has been classed as a terrorist organization, either wholly or in part, by the United States and other countries, as well as by the European Union. 

Among other things, he is credited in the Arab world and Lebanon with having ended the 18-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. This greatly bolstered the group's popularity in thr country.

Under his leadership, Hezbollah also brought about the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah War in 2006 after its militants carried out a cross-border raid into Israel, to which Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion.

Fighting ceased with a UN-brokered cease-fire.

Nasrallah remained an implacable enemy to Israel. In 2000, he told the Washington Post: "I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called 'Israel.' I consider its presence both unjust and unlawful."

The Israeli military has said Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia, was killed in a "precise" airstrike during a meeting of the group's leadership at its headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.  

A source close to Hezbollah told the AFP news agency that contact to Nasrallah had been lost since Friday night, when the strike took place, but the group has yet to confirm his death.

"Hassan Nasrallah is dead," Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani announced on X, formerly Twitter.

The 64-year-old Nasrallah, an Islamic cleric, led Hezbollah for more than three decades.

Israel's military says that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been killed in a strike on Friday on the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

"Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world," the IDF wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The report of Nasrallah's death has not yet been independently confirmed.

The Israeli military says it has mobilized three reserve battalions as hostilities between Israel and Lebanon escalate.

"In accordance with the situational assessment, the IDF is calling up three reserve battalions for operational activities and to strengthen the defense in the Central Command," the military said. It provided no further details.

The Central Command's areas of operation includes the occupied West Bank.

Earlier this week, the military sent two battalions to northern Israel to train for a possible ground offensive into Lebanon to combat that country's Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, which has been carrying out attacks on Israel that it says are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel for its part says it will keep fighting Hezbollah until its border with Lebanon is secured, and has carried out many strikes in the neigboring country, including some on Saturday in southern Beirut and east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

Israeli warplanes are striking targets in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, according to military spokesman Avichay Adraee.

In a social media post in Arabic he said the Israeli Defense Forces were striking "terror" targets belonging to Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, sirens sounded again in northern Israel.

Hezbollah militants targeted kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel "with a salvo of Fadi-1 rockets," the group said in a statement.

The Israel Defense Forces have detected some 10 rockets in the Upper Galilee area that crossed from Lebanon, it said on Saturday.

Some of the rockets were intercepted, the IDF said on X, formerly Twitter. Alerts were activated in the area.

The IDF did not say Hezbollah was behind the rockets' launch. However, it vowed to continue to "attack, damage and degrade" the group's military capabilities and infrastructure in Lebanon.

Following the alerts that were activated a short time ago in the Upper Galilee area, about ten launches were detected that crossed the territory of Lebanon, some of them were intercepted.