Israel’s war on Lebanon continues to escalate. This morning, the Jerusalem Post cited the Saudi Hadath news channel reporting that Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor of the late Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut on Oct. 4. However, neither the IDF nor Hezbollah has confirmed his death.
The assessment in Israeli media, however, is that no one in the underground complex would have made it out alive. Sputnik cited the Hebrew-language edition of Ynet, which reported that 73 tons of bombs were dropped on the bunker where Safieddine was thought to be present.
Regarding Israel’s ground invasion into Lebanon, the IDF claimed last night that more than 250 Hezbollah operatives have been killed since their operation began earlier this week, reported Times of Israel. The Israeli toll in the ground offensive stands at 9. The IDF’s 98th and 36th divisions were operating in several Lebanese villages close to the Israeli border, where the military said troops had located a large amount of weapons and infrastructure that Hezbollah left behind.
“Hezbollah is receiving very severe blows, one after the other,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed on Oct. 4 during a visit to the 36th Division’s headquarters in northern Israel. “[Hezbollah’s] missile and rocket division suffered a very heavy blow. A significant part was destroyed as a result of a high-quality and precise operation. Command and control headquarters, communications, the entire leadership of [the elite Radwan Force], and in fact the entire second and third tiers of command below Nasrallah were eliminated,” he continued.
Nonetheless, some 180 rockets were fired from Lebanon in barrages targeting northern Israel throughout the day, including over 70 rockets in a two-hour span on Friday evening, Oct. 4.
The IDF said on Friday that 2 Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 wounded as the result of a drone strike on their base on the Golan Heights which they attributed to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The major Iraqi militias, however, have denied responsibility for the attack.
