Worthy Christian News > Israel-Palestinian Conflict > ‘Israel Targets Former Hezbollah Leader’s Successor In Lebanon Strikes’ (Worthy News In-Depth)

‘Israel Targets Former Hezbollah Leader’s Successor In Lebanon Strikes’ (Worthy News In-Depth)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Israel tried to eliminate late Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah’s successor, Hashem Safieddine, in the Dahieh suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Israeli sources said early Friday.

Safieddine is a cousin of Nasrallah, who was recently killed in an Israeli operation. He was designated as a terrorist by the U.S. State Department in 2017, Worthy News learned.

Safieddine, as head of Hezbollah’s executive council, oversees the group’s political affairs. He also sits on the Jihad Council, which manages the group’s military operations.

Additionally, the Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah commander who was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers on a football field in July.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Khader Shahabiya was killed in an airstrike on Wednesday.

The attack on Majdal Shams village, a predominantly Druze village, killed 12 children between the ages of 10 and 16 as they were playing football and wounded dozens more.

Thursday’s strike came after Israel’s military urged civilians to evacuate near sites known to be used by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that has fired a barrage of rockets and drones at Israel.

MANY DISPLACED

Lebanese officials say dozens of people have been killed and 1.2 million displaced by the latest fighting.

Nearly 2,000 people were killed, including 127 children, and 9,384 injured since the start of “Israeli attacks on Lebanon” over the last year, the country’s health ministry said on Thursday.

It did not differentiate between combatants and civilians, making the figures difficult to verify independently.

Separately, at least 18 people were killed in an Israeli military strike in the Tulkarm refugee camp in “the occupied West Bank,” also known by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria, Hamas-linked authorities said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it carried out an airstrike with a fighter jet in Tulkarm but added that it killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, the head of the Hamas network in the area.

And on Gaza, Israel’s military announced that in a strike “approximately three months ago,” it believes it killed three senior Hamas figures.

It named them as “Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip; Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio on Hamas’ political bureau and Hamas’ labor committee; and Sami Oudeh, commander of Hamas’ general security mechanism.”

THOUSANDS KILLED

The war against Hamas, a close ally of Hezbollah and backed by Iran, has killed 41,788 people and injured 96,794 people wounded, according to the latest figures by the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry on Thursday.

At least 90 Palestinians were killed and 169 others injured in eight attacks by Israel over the last 24 hours, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The figures were complex to verify independently.

Yet the head of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said three of its schools were hit in Gaza in the past two days alone, killing at least 21 people.

Israeli forces stepped up their attacks on the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday, killing at least 70 people in strikes on a school and an orphanage sheltering displaced people, according to Palestinian media and officials.

“Schools used to be a safe haven for learning; they have now turned into hell for far too many,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Thursday.

Israel has vehemently denied targeting innocent civilians but says Iran-backed groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah use civilians as human shields.

MULTIPLE FRONTS

It was also seen as a signal by the IDF that Israeli forces can fight at multiple fronts.

Back in Lebanon, the health minister said more than 40 rescuers and firefighters have been killed by Israeli attacks over the last three days.

Israel’s military said it is trying to avoid these tragedies and ordered residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately, signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against Hezbollah.

Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the UN-declared buffer zone. Israel has previously ordered 52 other villages inside Lebanon to evacuate.

Israeli strikes on a central Beirut medical center killed at least nine people in the early hours of Thursday. The Israeli strike reportedly hit a medical center belonging to the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Organisation in the early hours of Thursday.

The attack was the second airstrike on central Beirut this week, with most strikes having previously been confined to suburbs in the southern suburbs.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, claimed the Israeli strike was a “violation of international humanitarian law.”

MILITARY INDUSTRIES

However, Israel has countered that it reacted to Hezbollah, which carried out new strikes. On Thursday, Hezbollah targeted what it called Israel’s “Sakhnin base” for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.

Israel also suffered setbacks at the frontlines, where at least eight Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, officials said Thursday.

The Lebanese army said that it returned fire at Israeli forces after one of its soldiers was killed in an Israeli strike, marking the first time that the Lebanese military participated in the fight against Israel.

The soldier was reportedly killed when a Lebanese Red Cross convoy accompanied by the Lebanese Army was struck while evacuating wounded from Taybeh, a border village in southern Lebanon.

Yet civilians are bearing the brunt of a “truly catastrophic” situation in Lebanon, the United Nations said. “The level of trauma, the level of fear amongst the population, has been extreme,” added Imran Riza, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator.

Yet despite the clashes, there was some hope: The Israeli army said Thursday its forces rescued an Iraqi Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by the Islamic State (IS) group and held captive in Gaza. Fawzia Amin Sido, 21, was freed “in a months-long secret operation” that involved Israel, the U.S. and Iraq, officials said.

More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS militants from the Sinjar region in Iraq in 2014, and some 2,600 are still missing.

G7 BACKING

However, Group of Seven (G7) leaders expressed “deep concern over the deteriorating situation in the Middle East” and called on regional players to “act responsibly and with restraint.”

In a joint statement on Thursday, G7 leaders said they condemned “in the strongest terms” Iran’s military attack against Israel earlier this week, which they said “constitutes a serious threat to regional stability.”

Joe Biden, the US president, said he was “discussing” possible Israeli strikes on Iranian oil sites in response to Tehran’s missile attack earlier this week.

His comments quickly sent oil prices soaring. Asked if he would “allow” Israel to retaliate against Iran, Biden said on Thursday that “we don’t ’allow’ Israel, we advise Israel. And nothing is going to happen today.” On Wednesday, Biden said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran has warned Washington that any country that aids an Israeli attack will be deemed an Iranian target.

Israel says it has the right to defend itself, especially after the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed, triggering wars.