The potential successor to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike that is reported to have targeted him.
In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut's southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.
The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said that Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential suburb and Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.
Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine since the attack.
Israeli 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 rumored successor would be yet another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah's leadership.
Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.
Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hezbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel's year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.
Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hezbollah since Oct. 8 last year.
The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hezbollah's senior military leadership, including Secretary General Nasrallah in an air attack on Sept. 27.
The Israeli assault has also killed 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.
Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 25 people and wounded 127 others the day before.
The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday's strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing, naming him as Saeed Atallah.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city that its warplanes also targeted during a 2006 war with Hezbollah.
It said in a later statement that it had killed two Hamas members operating in Lebanon, but did not say where they were killed. There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
ISRAEL WEIGHS OPTIONS FOR IRAN
The violence comes as the anniversary approaches of Hamas' attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed 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 Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes in Syria this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did little damage.
Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran's attack.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran's oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
Israeli news website Ynet reported on Saturday that the top US general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, is headed for Israel in the coming day. Israeli and US officials were not immediately reachable for comment.
