The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Hezbollah targets on Saturday in eastern and southern Lebanon, as the armed terror group fired rockets into northern Israel.
Saturday morning’s wave of Israeli strikes followed intense overnight bombardment targeting Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold, the site of a massive Israeli attack on Friday that flattened several residential buildings.
“The IAF (Israeli Air Force) conducted extensive strikes on dozens of terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of Beqaa and in different areas of southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.
Hezbollah secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was among those killed in the strike, the IDF announced Saturday morning.
The IDF said it also killed Ali Karaki, Hezbollah’s commander of the southern front, as well as other Hezbollah commanders, according to a Jerusalem Post report.
Hezbollah, however, has not commented.
Israel’s air force struck Hezbollah’s central headquarters using precise information from the intelligence wing and defense system. The headquarters was based underground, under a residential building in the Dahieh district in the Lebanese capital.
Nasrallah was the main decision maker and the strategic leader of Hezbollah.
As Hezbollah’s chief for 32 years, Nasrallah was responsible for the murder of countless Israeli civilians and soldiers and for the planning and execution of terrorist activities around the world in which civilians were murdered.
Since 8 October, Hezbollah had joined Hamas in its war against Israel and had fired thousands of rockets on northern Israel.
Earlier on Saturday, Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel, the first since heavy Israeli strikes pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight.
“Defending Lebanon and its people, and responding to the barbaric” Israeli attacks “on cities and villages and civilians,” Hezbollah fighters targeted kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel “with a salvo of Fadi-1 rockets,” the group said in a statement.
Surface-to-surface missiles
“The IDF will continue operating against anyone who promotes and engages in terrorism against the State of Israel and its people,” the Israel Defense Forces said.
Air raid sirens sounded across northern Israel early on Saturday, warning of a barrage of rockets being fired from across the border.
The Israeli military also reported that two surface-to-surface missiles were fired from across the border into Israeli territory. One fell in an open area in the center of the country and the other was intercepted in the north, it said.
Deputy Ambassador Ester Buzgan of Israel’s embassy in the Philippines shared an IDF statement about the precise strike on the central headquarters of the Hezbollah terror organization that was embedded under residential buildings in the heart of the Dahieh district in Beirut.
“At this time there is no change to the IDF defensive guidelines. If any changes will be made, an update will be released on the IDF and Home Front Command’s official platforms,” the statement said.
Hospitals evacuated
Lebanon’s health ministry said Saturday hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs would be evacuated.
It called on hospitals unaffected by Israeli strikes to “stop receiving non-emergency cases until the end of next week to make space to receive patients from hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs which will be evacuated due to the developments in the aggression.”
Authorities in Lebanon have yet to provide an updated toll from the Israeli strikes.
With violence raging on Israel’s northern border, the military announced that it had called up three reserve battalions to “strengthen defense” in the occupied West Bank.
The battalions, each comprising around 800 soldiers, are expected to replace West Bank forces recently mobilized for operations in the north.
Israeli forces also carried out strikes in Gaza during the night, the Hamas-run Palestinian territory’s civil defense agency reported.
Two people were killed and 11 were wounded in an air strike that targeted a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defense agency said.
