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Israel’s military conducted multiple air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight in one of its heaviest bombardments on the Lebanese capital in an intensifying campaign against armed group Hizbollah.
Residents across Beirut heard several large blasts, and flames and large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the southern suburb of Dahiyeh in the early hours of Friday.
Unconfirmed Israeli media reports suggested the strike targeted Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader killed in a massive strike on Dahiyeh last week. Safieddine, a fellow cleric and cousin of Nasrallah, was thought to have been groomed for the job in recent years. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
The blasts appeared on a similar scale to the waves of strikes that flattened at least six residential buildings in Dahiyeh, killing Nasrallah. Most of Dahiyeh’s hundreds of thousands of residents have fled the relentless Israeli bombardment in recent days.
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since last October, the majority in the past two weeks, Lebanon’s health minister said. More than 1.2mn people have been displaced, triggering one of the worst crises for the country in decades.
An Israeli air strike in the early hours of Friday near a border crossing between Lebanon and Syria cut off the main road used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israel’s bombardment, Ali Hamieh, the Lebanese transport minister, said on Hizbollah-affiliated Manar TV.
Hamieh said air strikes near the Masnaa border crossing had left a 4m-wide crater in the road. Footage on Manar TV’s Telegram account showed a road with a long, deep crater at a site it identified as the crossing.
Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, had said on X on Thursday that Hizbollah was using the civilian crossing to transport weapons from Syria after Israel targeted other smuggling routes.
The IDF said its air force had “eliminated” Mahmoud Yusef Anisi, who they said was a key leader in Hizbollah’s manufacture of precision guided missiles, in a strike in Beirut earlier in the week.
Hizbollah has not commented on the IDF claim. Anisi’s death, if confirmed, would be the latest blow to the Lebanese militant group, which has suffered a series of debilitating losses in recent weeks.
In a further sign of the expansion of Israel’s offensive, its military on Friday ordered the evacuation of 17 villages in southern Lebanon and told residents to move north of the Awali river, which in some places runs 60km north of Lebanon’s border with Israel. It brought the number of villages under such orders to 87.
Israel’s offensive in Lebanon against Hizbollah, which is backed by Iran, has raised concerns of an all-out conflict in the Middle East. Iran this week launched a ballistic missile barrage against Israel, saying it was in retaliation for the assassination of Nasrallah, one of Tehran’s closest allies, and other militant leaders. The missile attack drew threats of retaliation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi landed in Beirut on Friday, a surprise visit that he said was intended to show solidarity with Lebanon and to deliver food and medicine.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will lead prayers on Friday, a rare event reserved for important national moments. Khamenei is expected to focus on Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, the killing of Nasrallah and the implications for Iran’s regional strategy.
His last such sermon came in 2020 following the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most revered military commanders.
Israel has also intensified raids in the occupied West Bank in recent weeks and on Thursday carried out an air strike in Tulkarem that the Palestinian health ministry said had killed at least 18 people, in one of the deadliest strikes in the territory since the start of the war. Israel said it had targeted Hamas’s leader in the city, Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.
At least 37 people were killed and 151 more were wounded in Israeli attacks across the country in the past 24 hours, Lebanon’s health ministry said late on Thursday.
Hizbollah also said it had repelled several land operations by Israeli troops, including with ambushes and in direct clashes.
In a statement on Thursday evening, the G7 said it was “deeply concerned about the situation in Lebanon” and called for “a cessation of hostilities as soon as possible to create space for a diplomatic solution” and for “all actors to protect civilian populations”.
