Target of Beirut strikes presumed Nasrallah successor Hashem Safieddine, say Israeli media reports
William Christou
According to Israeli media, Hachem Safieddine, the presumed next leader of Hezbollah, was the target of Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, midnight on Friday.
Axios’s Barak Ravid, citing Israeli sources, said that Safiedinne was the target of Friday night’s attack. Hezbollah had not commented on the claims.
Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, was said by analysts to be the most likely candidate to replace the late-secretary general of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israeli aistrikes in Dahiyeh last week.
Friday’s strikes sounded similar to the explosions that killed Nasrallah, with a series of loud explosions following one another rocking Beirut. Large, red smoke plumes were pictured emanating from the site of the airstrikes.
Israel reportedly used dozens of 2000-lb bunker buster bombs in its strike last week, leaving craters dozens of meters deep.
Key events
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What is Israel’s Dahiyeh doctrine?
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‘No action going on right now’, Biden says
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Israeli strikes kill 37 people in Lebanon in last 24 hours, authorities say
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Summary of the day so far
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Target of Beirut strikes presumed Nasrallah successor Hashem Safieddine, say Israeli media reports
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IDF says it killed Hamas leader in Tulkarm
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37 people killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Thursday, says health ministry
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Israeli strike hits near perimeter of Beirut airport – report
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Huge blasts reported in Beirut
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G7 leaders voice ‘deep concern’ over ‘deteriorating situation’ in the Middle East
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At least 14 killed by Israeli strike in Tulkarm refugee camp, says Palestinian health ministry
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At least five killed in Israeli strike on occupied West Bank city – report
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Israel issues new evacuation orders for Beirut’s southern suburbs
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Israeli army says it has smoke shells that contain white phosphorus but doesn’t say if they were used in Beirut
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Summary of the day so far
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Iran warns US that any country that helps Israeli attack will be a ‘legitimate target’
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Gaza’s schools have ‘turned into hell’, says Unrwa chief after Israeli strikes
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Israeli military says it killed Hezbollah commander responsible for deadly football pitch strike
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Biden says he is ‘discussing’ possible Israeli strikes on Iran oil facilities
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Dozens of health workers killed in Lebanon over past 24 hours, says WHO
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‘Phase of unilateral self-restraint has ended’, Iran reportedly tells US
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Israeli attacks have killed 1,974 people in Lebanon since last October, health minister says
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Summary of the day so far …
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Lebanese army says it has returned fire at Israel for first time
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Middle East’s biggest airline halts Iran, Iraq and Jordan flights over ‘regional unrest’
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Multiple Israeli airstrikes heard in Beirut’s southern suburbs
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Lebanese soldier killed by Israeli strike while on evacuation and rescue mission
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Syrian media: air defences confronting ‘hostile targets’ in skies near Damascus
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Israel orders more Lebanese residents to flee their homes, including from the city of Nabatieh
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Israel announces that three months ago it killed three senior Hamas leaders in Gaza with airstrike
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Lebanese minister: 1.2 million people now displaced by Israeli attacks
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Lebanese ambassador to UK repeats claim Hezbollah had agreed to ceasefire before Nasrallah assassination by Israel
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Emir of Qatar accuses Israel of carrying out a ‘collective genocide’ in the region
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More than 70 killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza on Wednesday, Palestinian officials say
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Hezbollah leader had agreed to ceasefire days before assassination, Lebanese minister claims
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Analysis: Gulf leaders support Palestine – but many would not mind seeing Israel challenge Iran
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Six killed in Israeli strike on central Beirut medical centre, Lebanon says
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Opening summary
Al Jazeera is reporting that a mother and her two children were among those killed in the Israeli airstrike on a cafe in the occupied West Bank.
It reported that local hospitals had been overwhelmed with casualties from the attack, which levelled an entire building and was reportedly the bloodiest in the West Bank in 24 years.
Citing Palestinian media and a Red Crescent paramedic, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported earlier that many people were still trapped under the rubble.
Reporters have been grilling US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller about the latest Israeli attacks in the Middle East.
Asked “how long is it okay for them to keep this kind of level of attacks up [on Lebanon?]”, Miller replied that Washington was aware of Israel’s “long history” of “limited operations” turning into much longer conflicts. He said:
It’s impossible to know and it’s impossible to predict what the outcome of the fighting that’s going on in southern Lebanon is going to be over the next few days.
I can tell you that all of us here are very cognizant of the long history of Israel launching what at the time were described as limited operations … across the Lebanese border that have turned into something much different, that have turned into full-scale wars, and then at times occupation.
Asked whether Israel was taking the proper precautions to protect medical workers, after nine were killed in an Israeli strike on a Beirut health centre on Thursday, Miller said he could not give an assessment of Israel’s latest attacks.
He added that after looking at Israeli attacks in Gaza over the past year: “We did find that it was reasonable to assess that Israel had in certain incidences violated international humanitarian law.”
Citing Palestinian media and the Palestinian Information Center, Al Jazeera is reporting that three Palestinians have been killed in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza in an Israeli attack on the Jaber family home.
Gaza’s health ministry said late on Thursday that 99 Palestinians had been killed in the preceding 24 hours and 169 injured.
It noted that there were “still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them”.
A source close to Hezbollah has told the news agency AFP that Israel conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s south Beirut stronghold, the suburb of Dahiyeh, late on Thursday, in one of the most violent raids since Israel intensified its bombardment campaign last week. The news agency writes further:
AFP correspondents in the capital and beyond heard loud bangs that made car alarms go off and building shake.
About an hour later, AFP journalists heard several explosions coming from the direction of the southern suburbs after the Israeli military ordered residents of the Hadath neighbourhood to evacuate.
“Israel struck the southern suburbs 11 consecutive times,” the source said on the condition of anonymity.
AFP footage showed giant balls of flame rising from the targeted site with thick smoke billowing and flares shooting out.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said “more than 10 consecutive strikes have been recorded so far, in one of the strongest raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli war on Lebanon”.
The strikes echoed to mountain regions outside Beirut, the NNA said.
The Israeli military says it has successfully intercepted a “hostile aircraft” that crossed into the country from the east.
What is Israel’s Dahiyeh doctrine?
One of the areas being targeted by Israel in Beirut tonight is Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah died last week. The area has given its name to Israel’s infamous Dahiyeh doctrine, which is said to have originated in the 2006 war in Lebanon.
At the end of last year, emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University Paul Rogers wrote a comment piece for the Guardian on the strategy, which emphasises the use of disproportionate force. Here’s an extract and the link to the full article below:
In July of that year [2006], facing salvoes of rockets fired from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah militias, the IDF fought an intense air and ground war. Neither succeeded, and the ground troops took heavy casualties; but the significance of the war lies in the nature of the air attacks.
It was directed at centres of Hezbollah power in the Dahiyeh area, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also on the Lebanese economic infrastructure.
This was the deliberate application of “disproportionate force”, such as the destruction of an entire village, if deemed to be the source of rocket fire. One graphic description of the result was that “around a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed, a third of them children.
Towns and villages were reduced to rubble; bridges, sewage treatment plants, port facilities and electric power plants were crippled or destroyed.”
Two years after that war, the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University published Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War. Written by IDF reserve Col Gabi Siboni, it promoted the Dahiya doctrine as the way forward in response to paramilitary attacks.
The head of the Israeli military forces in Lebanon during the war, and overseeing the doctrine, was General Gadi Eizenkot. He went on to be the IDF chief of general staff, retiring in 2019, but was brought back as an adviser to Netanyahu’s war cabinet in October.
‘No action going on right now’, Biden says
Some more comments from Joe Biden, courtesy of the White House press pool.
Asked why he had not spoken to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days after he said he would on Sunday he replied:
Because there’s no action going on right now.
Asked if he worried an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil facilities would raise oil prices, he said;
If a hurricane hits, prices are going to go up. I don’t know; who knows.
Some more comments from US President Joe Biden, who after being asked how confident he was that an all-out war could be averted in the Middle East by the White House press pool, reportedly replied:
How confident are you it’s not going to rain? Look, I don’t believe there is going to be an all-out war. I think we can avoid it. But there is a lot to do yet, a lot to do yet.
Asked if he would send American troops to help Israel, the president said: “We have already helped Israel. We are going to protect Israel.”
The latest apparent Israeli attack on Hezbollah leadership, in which Hachem Safieddine, the presumed next leader of Hezbollah, was reportedly the target, comes almost exactly a week after leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a massive Israeli strike on Beirut that flattened several apartment blocks.
Israel has a long history of assassinating its enemies, often causing civilian casualties, and has also killed around 20 other senior Hezbollah figures in recent weeks and months.
The include Ibrahim Aqil, reportly killed by an airstrike in Beirut in September, who was one of the last founder members of Hezbollah’s military wing to have survived more than 40 years of conflict with Israel.
Fuad Shukur, whom Israel said was responsible for most of Hezbollah’s advanced weaponry, including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs, was killed in a strike on Beirut in July.
Nabil Qaouk, who held a series of military command positions and had recently begun travelling to Iran, was killed in a strike earlier this week.
Ali Karaki, who had responsibility for military operations along the contested border with Israel, was killed alongside Nasrallah, as was Ibrahim Jazini, who was responsible for internal security within Hezbollah.