Hezbollah has confirmed the death of its senior leader, Ali Karaki, who was head of the group’s southern front, in Israeli airstrikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs. The organization announced on Sunday that attackers “martyred” Karaki along with a group of his jihadist brothers during an assault on Haret Hreik, which also claimed the life of Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israeli airstrikes took place on Friday evening, hitting Hezbollah’s main headquarters in the Dahieh area of Beirut. Reports from Xinhua indicate that Nasrallah and several other commanders were killed in the assault.
In a separate incident, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported on Sunday that it had killed Nabil Qaouk, commander of Hezbollah’s Preventive Security Unit and a member of its central council, in an airstrike on Saturday.
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The IDF described Qaouk as closely associated with Hezbollah’s leadership and involved in planning terrorist activities against Israel.
In October 2020, the U.S. designated Qaouk as a global terrorist for his involvement in events that honored deceased Hezbollah members and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, who died in a U.S. drone strike in January 2020.
The recent airstrikes have caused widespread destruction, flattening residential buildings and resulting in at least six fatalities and 91 injuries, according to local media reports.
These developments mark a significant escalation in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which reignited on October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, prompting retaliatory artillery fire and airstrikes in southeastern Lebanon.
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