New Delhi: The Israel-Hezbollah crisis deepened in the intervening night of Friday and Saturday as Israeli warplanes targetted residential buildings just south of Beirut, killing Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was convening a leadership meeting in an underground headquarters. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, at least six people were killed and more than 90 injured by the Israeli strikes on Friday evening, but the toll was expected to rise. Emergency workers were still searching through the rubble even as Israel struck again, The Indian Express reported.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Netanyahu said, adding, “We’ll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met.”
Netanyahu cut short his visit to the UN to return to Israel and take stock of the situation. Strikes have intensified from both the Israeli and Lebanon sides with the explosions in Beirut being termed as the worst that the capital has seen in the last year. The Israeli military says it struck the central headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut. Israeli army spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told news agency AP that it targeted the main Hezbollah headquarters, located beneath residential buildings. Attacks on Hezbollah targets by fighter jets continued into the early hours Saturday after the army said it told residents to evacuate three buildings it was targeting.
Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah
Hassan Nasrallah has been at the helm of Hezbollah for nearly three decades now. Under the leadership of the 64-year-old, Hezbollah has fought wars against Israel and taken part in the conflict in neighbouring Syria, helping tip the balance of power in favour of President Bashar Assad. According to AP, Nasrallah was born in 1960 into a poor Shiite family in Beirut’s impoverished northern suburb of Sharshabouk. He studied theology and joined the Amal movement, a Shiite political and paramilitary organization, before becoming one of Hezbollah’s founders.
Hezbollah was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members who came to Lebanon in the summer of 1982 to fight invading Israeli forces. It was the first group that Iran backed and used as a way to export its brand of political Islam. Nasrallah built a power base as Hezbollah became part of a cluster of Iranian-backed factions and governments known as the Axis of Resistance. It was in 1992 that Hezbollah chose Nasrallah as its secretary-general. Five years later, the United States designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
A day after the Israel-Hamas war started, Hezbollah began attacking Israeli military posts along the border calling it a “backup front” for Gaza. In speeches throughout the conflict, he has argued that Hezbollah’s cross-border strikes had pulled away Israeli forces that would otherwise be focused on Hamas in Gaza and insisted that Hezbollah would not halt its attacks on Israel until a cease-fire is reached in Gaza.