 "Slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah's successor Safieddine confirmed dead, says Netanyahu")
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed the death of Hezbollah’s presumed new chief Hashem Safieddine.
In a statement on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that Israel has assassinated Safieddine, who was presumed to be the successor of Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was in turn assassinated in a massive bombardment of Hezbollah’s headquarters in Lebanon’s Beirut last month.
Last week, Israel conducted a series of airstrikes in Lebanon on Thursday midnight. The target was a meeting of senior Hezbollah leaders which was believed to be attended by Safieddine. While there were reports that Safieddine was there at the time of the strikes, his death was not formally announced.
Safieddine was a cousin of Nasrallah and was among the earliest members of Hezbollah.
In 1995, Safieddine was promoted to Hezbollah’s Consultative Assembly and was soon after appointed as the head of group’s military activities, according to The New York Times.
In 1998, Safieddine was elevated to be the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, a top position previously held by Nasrallah himself before he became the overall chief of the group, as per the paper.
The United States designated Safieddine as a terrorist in 2017. The Department of State at the time described him as a senior leader of the group and said he oversaw Hezbollah’s “political, organizational, social, and educational activities” and posed “a serious risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.
For more than a month, Israel has turned the attention to Hezbollah and has taken out almost the entire leadership of the group. In some of the most intensive bombardments in decades anywhere in the world, Israel has also considerably dismantled the group’s war-waging capabilities. Then, earlier this month, Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon where its intended objective is to drive the group away from southern Lebanon that borders Israel’s northern part.
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