Israel targets Hezbollah intel HQ in Lebanon, Iran says it will not back down
Israel said it had targeted the intelligence headquarters of
Hezbollah in Lebanon overnight and was assessing the damage on Friday after a
series of strikes on senior figures in the group that Iran's Supreme Leader
dismissed as counterproductive.
The air attack on Beirut, part of a wide assault that has
driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes, was reported to have
targeted the potential successor to the leader of Hezbollah assassinated by
Israel a week ago.
Hashem
Safieddine's fate was unclear and neither Israel nor Hezbollah have offered
any comment.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a huge crowd in
Tehran that Iran and its regional allies would not back down, two days after
Tehran raised the stakes when it fired
missiles at Israel, which sent ground forces into Lebanon this week.
The Israeli military has said its ground operations are
"localized" in villages near the border, but it has not specified how
far into Lebanon its ground forces would advance or how long the operation is
expected to last.
Iran's missile salvo was partly in retaliation for Israel's
killing of Hezbollah secretary-general Sayyed
Hassan Nasrallah, a dominant figure who had turned the group into a
powerful armed and political force with reach across the Middle East.
Israel has vowed to
respond and oil
prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran's oil
facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in
Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
"The resistance in the region will not back down even
with the killing of its leaders," Khamenei said in a rare
appearance leading Friday prayers in Tehran, mentioning Nasrallah in
his speech and calling Iran's attack on Israel legal and legitimate.
Iran will not "procrastinate nor act hastily to carry
out its duty" in confronting Israel, he said, without issuing a direct new
threat to Israel or the United States but grasping the barrel of a rifle that
stood to his left.
The semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted
Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying on Friday that if
Israel attacks, Tehran would in turn target Israeli energy and gas installations.
Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited three Israeli officials as
saying that Hezbollah official Safieddine, rumoured to be Nasrallah's
successor, had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut overnight but
that his fate was not clear.
Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday
afternoon the military was still assessing the damage caused by airstrikes in
southern Beirut on Thursday night, which he said targeted Hezbollah's
intelligence headquarters.
Earlier the Israeli military reported that it had killed the
head of Hezbollah's communication networks, Mohammad Rashid Sakafi. It declined
to comment on the report that Safieddine was targeted.
Hezbollah made no comment on the fate of Sakafi or
Safieddine, whose brother Sayyed Abdallah Safieddine - Hezbollah's
representative to Iran - attended Khamenei's speech in Tehran.
"Every strike launched by any group against Israel is a
service to the region and to all humanity," he said.
In Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, many
buildings have been reduced to rubble by a week of intensive strikes on the
area. Along a main market street, known as Moawad Souk, nearly all the
storefronts had been damaged and the street was filled with broken glass.
"We're alive but don't know for how long," said
Nouhad Chaib, a 40-year-old man already displaced from the south.
Israeli strikes have increasingly targeted medical
facilities and aid workers. A strike late on Wednesday hit a building in
central Beirut used by Hezbollah-affiliated rescue workers, killing nine, the
Lebanese health ministry said.
On Friday, an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs
killed a rescuer from the same unit and another in the southern Lebanese town
of Marjayoun was hit near its main hospital. Medical staff have decided to
temporarily evacuate, the hospital director Mounes Klakesh told Reuters.
Israel accuses the militants of hiding among civilians,
which Hezbollah denies.
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, visiting Beirut, said
his presence in the city on Friday "in these difficult circumstances"
was the best evidence that Iran stood by Lebanon and Hezbollah.
He met with top Lebanese officials, including caretaker
Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri - a Hezbollah
ally.
Araqchi said Tehran supported efforts for a ceasefire in
Lebanon on the condition it would be backed by Hezbollah and simultaneous with
a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
A Hamas attack on southern Israel last Oct. 7 stunned the
nation and triggered its war against the group. Iran's allies in its "Axis
of Resistance"-- Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis and armed groups in Iraq
-- have carried out attacks in the region in support of the Palestinians in
Gaza. Khamenei said Afghanistan should join the "defence".
U.S. President Joe Biden suggested on Thursday that Israel's
response to Iran's missile salvo, which it fended
off, could include a strike on Iran's oil facilities.
His comments contributed to a surge in
global oil prices, as traders consider potential supply disruptions.
Israel says its operations in Lebanon seek to allow tens of
thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments during
the Gaza war forced them to evacuate from its north.
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on
Lebanon over the last year, most of them in the past two weeks, Lebanese
authorities said.
U.N. officials said most of Lebanon's nearly 900 shelters
were full and that people fleeing were increasingly sleeping in the streets or
public parks.
An Israeli air strike early Friday left a 4-metre-wide
(4.4-yard) crater by Lebanon's main border crossing into Syria, blocking the
road for cars full of people fleeing from Lebanon.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah uses the crossing to
bring weapons into Lebanon. Lebanese authorities have said trucks are
checked and the crossing is crucial for humanitarian purposes.
People were seen picking their way around the crater on foot
on Friday, with suitcases and gallons of fuel to cross into Syria.
Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon this week
followed two weeks of intense airstrikes. Hezbollah says it has repelled them
with ambushes, rockets and direct clashes.
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