Israel killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a huge air strike in Lebanon, dealing the movement a seismic blow that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday called a “turning point” for his country.
Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death after the Israeli military said he had been killed in an air strike Friday on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Iran-backed group’s main bastion.
Some Israelis celebrated his killing, while in Lebanon, his supporters’ disbelief gave way to anguished mourning.
Around the region, leaders condemned the slaying while some Hezbollah allies vowed vengeance, fuelling fears of more violence in the Middle East after nearly a year of war in Gaza.
“Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah… has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
Netanyahu said Israel had “settled the score” for the killing of Israelis and citizens of other countries, including Americans.
As long as Nasrallah was alive, he added, he could have “quickly restored the capabilities we had eroded from Hezbollah” in a series of recent operations.
“So, I gave the order — and Nasrallah is no longer with us,” he said, adding that his country was on the cusp of “what appears to be a historic turning point” in the fight against its enemies.
Israel carried out more attacks on Lebanon Saturday, with one Lebanese security source saying a strike targeted a warehouse near Beirut airport.
The Israeli military has warned it will foil arms shipments through the airport.
Iran, which arms and finances Hezbollah, said a senior member of its Revolutionary Guards Corps had been killed in the same strike. A source close to Hezbollah said the group’s top commander in south Lebanon, Ali Karake, had also died.
Women were seen weeping on the streets of Beirut as Hezbollah announced Nasrallah’s death.
“I can’t describe my shock at this announcement… we all started crying,” said Maha Karit, one of the few people who agreed to be identified by name.
But some Israelis hailed his death.
“It should have been done a long time ago,” said David Shalev in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv.
– ‘Unjust bloodshed’ –
Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah, enjoying cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters, and was the only man in Lebanon with the power to wage war or make peace.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “His elimination makes the world a safer place.”
In Tehran, posters of Nasrallah were put up bearing the slogan “Hezbollah is alive”.
Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref denounced the “unjust bloodshed” and threatened that Nasrallah’s killing will bring about Israel’s “destruction”.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared public mourning, as did Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.
Yemen’s Huthi rebels said they fired a missile at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Saturday, hoping to hit it as Netanyahu returned from a trip to New York.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned by the dramatic escalation of events in Beirut”.
US President Joe Biden — whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier — said it was a “measure of justice”, while Kamala Harris, who is running to replace him in the White House, called Nasrallah “a terrorist with American blood on his hands”.
Israel has raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.
Biden, asked if he thought such an operation was inevitable, said: “It’s time for a ceasefire.”
– Mass displacement –
Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border strikes on Israeli troops a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas condemned Nasrallah’s killing as a “cowardly terrorist act”.
Earlier this month, Israel shifted the focus of its firepower from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds around the country has killed more than 700 people, according to health ministry figures.
Strikes on Saturday killed 33 people and wounded 195, the ministry said.
Most of the deaths in Lebanon came on Monday, the deadliest day of violence since the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said “well over 200,000 people are displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Syria.
– ‘Very sophisticated’ –
The Israeli military said it has hit more than 140 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since Friday night, and continued to pound south Beirut into Saturday, sending panicked families fleeing.
An AFP photographer said dozens of buildings have been destroyed.
The blasts that rocked south Beirut late Friday were the fiercest there since Israel and Hezbollah last went to war in 2006.
Hundreds of families spent the night outside.
“I didn’t even pack any clothes, I never thought we would leave like this and suddenly find ourselves on the streets,” south Beirut resident Rihab Naseef, 56, told AFP.
Middle East expert James Dorsey described Nasrallah’s killing as “very sophisticated”, adding it “demonstrates… just how deeply Israel has penetrated Hezbollah”.
His death leaves Hezbollah under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said.
“Either we see an unprecedented reaction by Hezbollah… or this is total defeat,” said Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group think tank.
– Israel to ‘remove this threat’ –
Israel’s military also announced strikes Saturday on the Bekaa valley in eastern Lebanon and on the south.
Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel, and later said it launched “a salvo of Fadi-3 rockets” towards the Ramat David airbase which it has targeted before.
Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until the border with Lebanon is secured.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safe,” he said.
Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,586 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
