By Maya Gebeily and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Massive consecutive strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs from late Saturday into Sunday, Reuters eyewitnesses said, sending booms across the city and sparking flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away.
The strikes came after days of bombing by Israel of Beirut suburbs considered strongholds for Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and possibly his potential successor.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, the potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli airstrike near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.
The Israeli military said it eliminated Nasrallah in a strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut on Sept. 27. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed.
Lebanese security sources said Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential area and Hezbollah stronghold south of central Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of Thursday night’s attack.
Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine.
His loss would be another blow to the group and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel has been expanding its actions in Lebanon. On Saturday, it made its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.
At least eight strikes rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Saturday including close to the airport, according to Reuters witnesses, after the Israeli military warned some residents to flee.
Before the recent upsurge, exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah had been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.
Israeli military spokesperson 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 death tolls.
Israel says it stepped up its assault on Hezbollah to enable the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to homes in northern Israel, bombarded by the group since last Oct. 8.
Israeli authorities said on Saturday that nine Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon so far.
CIVILIAN DEATHS, DISPLACEMENT
The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people – almost a quarter of the population – from their homes.
The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing, naming him as Saeed Atallah.
The Israeli 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 targeted 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 shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.
Hezbollah said it had fired missiles at what it called “ATA company for military industries near Sakhnin base,” close to Haifa. It was not immediately clear what Hezbollah was referring to.
The Israeli army said two projectiles had crossed from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted while the other landed but caused no damage.
ANNIVERSARY OF OCT. 7
The violence came as the anniversary approached of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly all of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million.
The impact on civilians has prompted widespread protests internationally. Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in major cities around the world on Saturday as the anniversary approached.
Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli airstrikes this year, launched ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did 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. U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil infrastructure.
The top U.S. general for the region, Army General Michael “Eric” Kurilla, is traveling in the Middle East, a U.S. defense official said on Saturday, declining to specify which country or to confirm Israeli media reports that he had arrived in Israel for consultations with Israeli military officials.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Laila Bassam in Beirut; Phil Stewart in Washington, Writing by John Davison and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Daniel Wallis)