Israel carried out multiple airstrikes on Friday targeting Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Dahiyeh in southern suburbs in an apparent attempt to kill the group’s top leadership.
This was the largest Israeli strike in Beirut since the 2006 war in Lebanon, and Israeli media said the primary target was Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Israeli officials said senior Hezbollah officials were at the headquarters at the time of the attack. There has been no official response as yet from Hezbollah on the attack or on Sayyed Nasrallah’s status.
If true, the targeting of Nasrallah would be a large escalation in fighting between Hezbollah-Israel, already teetering on the precipice of a full-scale war.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari confirmed that the Israeli military targeted the Hezbollah headquarters with Israeli media claiming the army used bunker busters – large bombs capable of penetrating deep into the earth before exploding – in the attack.
The explosions rocked the capital city, heard across the city. There were multiple large plumes of smoke billowing from the strike sites, seen as far as the city of Batroun, an hour’s drive north of the capital city.
According to the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar TV, four buildings were destroyed by the airstrikes.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote on X that the “target of Israeli strikes in Beirut was Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who reportedly survived the assassination attempt.”
Tasnim News Agency,said to be close to Iran’s IRGC citing security sources, confirmed that Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah was in a safe location.
Videos showing the site of the airstrike showed several buildings that had completely collapsed, with fires burning under the rubble. Pictures showed a car swallowed by a hole in the ground, while rubble and dust made the asphalt street unrecognizable.
The sound of ambulances rushing to the scene were heard across Beirut, but reports of casualties had yet to emerge.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly left a press briefing at the UN after receiving an update from his military adviser.
An Israeli official said Israel notified the U.S. minutes before the strike in Beirut, but two senior U.S. officials denied that, telling press they had no prior warning. “We had no knowledge of it or involvement in it,” a senior official said.
Friday’s airstrike was the fifth time that Israel hit the capital city in a week, and came off the back of a week of an intensified aerial campaign against Lebanon. Israel said that it bombed more than 2,000 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, killing at least 700 and wounding more than 1,835.
