Middle East: IDF says it's killed another Hezbollah figure

The Israeli military says it has killed another senior Hezbollah official in an airstrike in a Beirut suburb. 

The military said Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah's Central Council, was killed in an airstrike on Saturday. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah. 

Several senior commanders from the Iran-backed group have been killed in Israeli strikes in recent weeks. The group's long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in Beirut on Friday.

Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Germany and other countries. 

The World Food Program (WFP) said it has launched an emergency operation to provide food assistance to one million people affected by the escalating conflict in Lebanon.
     
"A further acceleration of the conflict this weekend underscored the need for an immediate humanitarian response," the UN agency said in a statement.

The agency is distributing ready-to-eat food rations, bread, hot meals and food parcels to families in shelters across the country.

"In just a few days, WFP assistance has reached thousands of newly displaced people," the program's Lebanon Country Director, Matthew Hollingworth, said. 

"As the crisis deepens, we are preparing to assist up to one million people through a mix of cash and food support," he added.

The agency called on the international community to mobilize $105 million (€94 million) to fund the operation through the end of the year.

China has said it opposes any violation of Lebanon's sovereignty after an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah's death is widely considered a significant blow to the Iran-aligned group, which is already reeling from a campaign of escalating Israeli attacks.

China's Foreign Ministry on its website urged all parties, and especially Israel, to prevent the conflict from expanding or "even getting out of control."

"China is closely following this incident and deeply concerned about the escalation of tensions in the region," the statement said. 

It called on "all parties, particularly Israel, to take immediate steps to cool down the situation." 

The ministry said China "opposes and condemns all action that harms innocent civilians and opposes any move that exacerbates conflict."

Iran has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council after the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.

Israel had "perpetrated a flagrant act of terrorist aggression against residential areas in Beirut, using US-supplied thousand-pound bunker busters," Iran's UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, wrote in the letter to the Security Council.

He called on the Security Council to "take immediate and decisive action to stop Israel's ongoing aggression" and prevent it "from dragging the region into full-scale war."

The timing of any proposed meeting of the 15-nation body remains uncertain. Diplomatic sources have suggested a session on Sunday is unlikely.

The Israeli military says it has conducted strikes against "dozens" of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, two days after an airstrike that killed the group's chief Hassan Nasrallah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "attacked dozens of terrorist targets in the territory of Lebanon in the last few hours," the army said in a statement. 

It added that the strikes targeted "buildings where weapons and military structures of the organization were stored."

The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israel's strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 1,030 people in less than two weeks. They include 156 women and 87 children, according to the ministry.

The UN says the strikes have also displaced more than 200,000 people inside Lebanon and caused more than 50,000 to flee to neighboring Syria.

Nasrallah was killed on Friday in an Israeli airstrike on a compound underneath civilian residential buildings in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

The killing has sparked fears of an all-out regional war. 

Iran condemned the killing as "unjust bloodshed."

The Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah on Saturday confirmed the death of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah, whose death could dramatically reshape conflicts across the Middle East, was killed in an Israeli strike on the group's central command headquarters in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Israel's army said it was continuing strikes with fighter jets on what it called Hezbollah targets and told residents to evacuate three buildings it was attacking. 

Earlier, on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations and vowed that Israel's campaign against Hezbollah would continue.

Netanyahu ended his visit to the United States early and returned to Israel.

rc/nm (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)