By Maya Gebeily and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Back-to-back massive attacks hit Beirut’s southern suburbs from Saturday night into Sunday, Reuters witnesses said, setting off explosions across the city and causing red and white flashes for almost 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away.
The attacks came after days of Israeli bombing of Beirut suburbs considered strongholds of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah armed group, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and possibly his possible successor.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, the potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, following an Israeli airstrike near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.
The Israeli military said it eliminated Nasrallah in an attack on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut on September 27. Hezbollah confirmed that he had been killed.
Lebanese security sources said Israeli attacks since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential area and Hezbollah stronghold south of central Beirut, have prevented rescue workers from scouring the site of Thursday night’s attack.
Hezbollah has so far made no comment on Safieddine.
Its loss would be another blow to the group and its patron, Iran. Israeli attacks across the region last year, sharply accelerating in recent weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel has been expanding its actions in Lebanon. It carried out its first attack on the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday, a Lebanese security official said, and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.
At least eight attacks rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Saturday, including near the airport, according to Reuters witnesses, after the Israeli military warned some residents to flee.
Before the recent uprising, exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah had been mainly limited to the border area between Israel and Lebanon, paralleling Israel’s year-long war in Gaza against the Palestinian group Hamas.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Saturday that Israel had killed 440 Hezbollah fighters in its ground operations in southern Lebanon and destroyed 2,000 Hezbollah targets. Hezbollah has not released the death toll.
Israel says it has intensified its attack on Hezbollah to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombed by the group since October 8.
Israeli authorities said on Saturday that nine Israeli soldiers had been killed so far in southern Lebanon.
CIVIL DEATHS, DISPLACEMENTS
The Israeli attack also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people – nearly a quarter of the population – to flee their homes.
The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a Hamas member, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group said the attack killed a leader of its armed wing, calling him Saeed Atallah.
Israel said in a statement that it had killed two Hamas members operating in Lebanon, but did not say whether they had been in Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city also attacked during a 2006 war with Hezbollah.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens on Saturday sent people running for cover amid rocket fire from Lebanon.
Hezbollah said it had fired missiles at what it called “the ATA company for military industries near the Sakhnin base” near Haifa. It was not immediately clear what Hezbollah was referring to.
The Israeli military said two projectiles had crossed from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted while the other landed but caused no damage.
OCTOBER ANNIVERSARY. 7
The violence came as the anniversary approached of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli counts.
Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and displaced nearly the enclave’s entire population of 2.3 million.
The impact on civilians has sparked widespread protests internationally. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of major cities around the world on Saturday as the anniversary approached.
Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas and has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps to Israeli airstrikes this year, launched ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The attacks caused little damage.
Israel has been weighing options for its response.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian oil facilities. US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure.
The top U.S. general for the region, Army Gen. Michael “Eric” Kurilla, is traveling to the Middle East, a U.S. defense official said Saturday, without specifying which country or confirming Israeli media reports that he had arrived in Israel for consultations. with Israeli military officers.