Nasrallah’s possible successor out of contact since Friday, Lebanese source says

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Nasrallah’s possible successor out of contact since Friday, Lebanese source says

By Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Maayan Lubell

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The potential successor to slain Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an ******** airstrike that is reported to have targeted him.

In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, ******* carried out a large strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three ******** officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.

The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said that ongoing ******** strikes on Beirut’s southern suburb – known as Dahiyeh – since Friday have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the *******.

Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine since the *******.

******** Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday the military was still assessing the Thursday night airstrikes, which he said targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.

The loss of Nasrallah’s rumoured successor would be yet another ***** to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. ******** strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.

******* expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more ****** hit Beirut suburbs and ******** troops launched raids in the south.

******* has begun an intense ******** campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging ***** with Hezbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the *******-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to *******’s year-old war in Gaza against ************ group ******.

******* says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern *******, bombarded by Hezbollah since Oct.8 last year.

The ******** attacks have eliminated much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Secretary General Nasrallah in an air ******* on Sept. 27.

The ******** ******** has also ******* hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, including rescue workers, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people – almost a quarter of the population – to flee their homes.

The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s strike on a ************ ******** camp in Tripoli ******* a member of ******, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the ************ group also said the strike ******* a leader of its armed wing.

The ******** military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni *******-majority port city that its warplanes also targeted during a 2006 war with Hezbollah.

******* has meanwhile staged nightly bombardment of Dahiyeh, once a bustling and densely populated area of Beirut and a stronghold for Hezbollah.

On Saturday, smoke billowed over Dahiyeh, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble sending residents fleeing to other parts of Beirut or of Lebanon.

In northern *******, air raid sirens sent people running for their shelters amid rocket ***** from Lebanon.

******* WEIGHS OPTIONS FOR IRAN

The ********* comes as the anniversary approaches of ******’ ******* on southern ******* on Oct. 7, 2023, which ******* 1,200 people and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to ******** tallies.

*******’s subsequent ******** on Gaza has ******* nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly all of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million.

Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and ******, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to ******** air strikes in Syria this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at ******* on Tuesday. The strikes did little damage.

******* has been weighing options in its response to Iran’s *******.

Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an ******* on Iran’s oil facilities as ******* pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their ****** allies in Gaza.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday urged ******* to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks ******* has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

******** news website Ynet reported that the top U.S. general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, is headed for ******* in the coming day. ******** and U.S. officials were not immediately reachable for comment.

(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Laila Bassam in Beirut; Jaidaa Taha and Adam Makary in Cairo, Parisa Hafezi in Istanbul, Kanishka Singh, Phil Stewart, Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom in Washington, Tala Ramadan, Jana Choukeir, Maha El Dahan, Pesha Magid, Elwely Elwelly and Clauda Tanios in Dubai;Writing by William Mallard and John DavisonEditing by Frances Kerry)

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