Israel’s attacks on Lebanon – in numbers
Israel targeted potential new Hezbollah leader in Beirut strikes: Report
The Israeli military attempted to kill Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in an air strike in Beirut on Wednesday night, the Axios news outlet reports.
Citing three anonymous Israeli officials, they said Safieddine, tipped as Nasrallah’s most likely successor, was hiding in a bunker deep underground in a suburb in southern Beirut and it wasn’t clear if he had been killed in the strike.
The US State Department listed Safieddine, who currently heads Hezbollah’s executive council, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2017.
Wave of Israeli air strikes pound Beirut’s southern suburbs
There has been 20 strikes in the last 24 hours or so. Eleven of those have been in the southern suburbs of Beirut. I’m now in the centre of Beirut and it’s about seven kilometres (around 4.3 miles) to the south from here.
Huge strikes. There are reports that they were bunker busting bombs. They dig very deep and can down into tunnels and they can level entire buildings. The huge explosions really rocked much of Beirut.
The majority of them were in the Dahiyeh area. We’ve seen many air strikes there before, but we know that Israeli media has been reporting that Hashem Safieddine was targeted in that strike.
He’s known to be possibly the next leader of Hezbollah. He’s certainly in the upper echelons of Hezbollah. However, we have not yet had any statement from Hezbollah as to whether he was there or not, or whether he was being targeted, and neither from the Israeli forces. So we have yet to confirm.
Smoke and flames rise over Beirut’s southern suburbs after a huge strike on Beirut, Lebanon, late on October 3
Senior US Republican lawmaker urges Biden to speed up Israel arms sales
Representative Michael McCaul urged the US president to speed up weapons shipments to Israel, which have been held up in recent months over concerns they are being used to violate international law in Gaza and Lebanon.
“I urge you to act today to ensure all weapons shipments to Israel, including 2,000-pound (907 kg) bombs, are expedited to support our ally,” McCaul said in a letter to Biden.
McCaul, who reviews all major foreign US weapons sales in his position as chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said he knew of more than 10 weapons shipments to Israel that have been awaiting final approval for more than four months.
