As part of its ongoing punitive campaign against the terrorist organization based in Lebanon, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stated on Sunday morning that Nabil Qawuq, a top official of Hezbollah, had died on Saturday in an airstrike in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut.
Hezbollah killed by IDF :
As per the IDF, Qawuq held the position of Commander of Hezbollah’s “Preventive Security Unit” and was also a prominent member of the Central Council of the organization. According to the military, he was “directly involved in advancing terrorist attacks against the state of Israel and its citizens in recent days” and was thought to be close to Hezbollah’s leadership.
Prior to joining Hezbollah in the 1980s, Qawuq held positions as chief of the southern area of Lebanon and deputy leader of the Executive Council.
Hezbollah also announced on Sunday that Ali Karaki, the man in charge of the organization’s military operations in southern Lebanon and commander of the southern front, had passed away. Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, and Karaki perished in a significant IDF strike in Beirut on Friday. Israel had attempted to kill him earlier in the week, but he had escaped.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had earlier on Sunday announced that during the night, its fighter jets had destroyed dozens of Hezbollah locations in Lebanon, including rocket launchers that had been aimed at Israel and structures where the terrorist organization kept weaponry.
According to Lebanon’s official news agency, an Israeli bombing in northeastern Lebanon on Sunday morning claimed 11 lives, however it was not immediately clear if any of the dead in the village of Al-Ain were Hezbollah members.
The health ministry of Lebanon reports that since Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah over the previous week, over 630 people have died and over 2,000 have been injured in Lebanon. Health experts in Lebanon estimate that women and children made up at least 25% of the dead.
Israel claimed that a large number of the dead were Hezbollah agents.
Israel’s security cabinet revised its official objectives for the war against Hamas in Gaza earlier this month. These objectives now include enabling the safe return of those who were displaced by Hezbollah attacks to their homes in the north. The Gaza war was sparked by Hezbollah’s low-intensity cross-border attacks, which started the day after Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
In order to accomplish this, the IDF is undermining Hezbollah’s ability to command and control, eliminating its capabilities along the border, and eliminating the possibility of a Radwan army assault.
According to a UNHCR spokeswoman on Saturday, there are currently 211,319 displaced individuals in Lebanon; 118,000 of them have been relocated since Monday, when Israel drastically increased the intensity of its attacks.
The rest had left their houses after Hezbollah began its mildly aggressive cross-border attacks on October 7, when its Palestinian allies Hamas launched an unprecedented onslaught on Israel that sparked the Gaza War.
Eight rockets fired from Lebanon towards the Tiberias region on Sunday morning caused the city of Tiberias and numerous surrounding villages around the Sea of Galilee to sound their sirens, according to a report from the IDF.
The IDF reports that no one was hurt when the rockets landed in wide spaces. At least one missile was seen to have landed in the Sea of Galilee, according to footage posted on social media.
The Jordanian military announced on Saturday night that a Grad missile, fired from southern Lebanon, had landed southeast of Amman in a barren desert region close to the town of Muwaqqar.
The statement claims that the strike, which happened some 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the Lebanese border, resulted in no injuries or property damage.
The IDF reported that a missile fired from Lebanon struck the West Bank close to Jerusalem on Saturday night, the group’s deepest rocket strike since the start of the severe conflict this month.
On Saturday night, unconfirmed reports reportedly emerged of an airstrike near Al-Bukamal on the border between Iraq and Syria, as well as another bombing in other areas of the Deir Ezzor province in northeastern Syria.
Twelve Iran-backed fighters were allegedly killed and numerous more injured in airstrikes in eastern Syria, according to a war monitoring group headquartered in Syria. It is unclear who carried out the strikes, while there is conjecture that Israel or the United States may have been involved.
The unclaimed airstrikes that targeted the Iranian-aligned fighters’ positions in the eastern region of the city of Deir Ezzor, close to the Iraqi border, killed twelve of them, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Five of these strikes, the group observed, were directed towards military installations close to the airport in Deir Ezzor.
The observatory has been charged with inflating casualty estimates in the past, despite claiming to rely on a network of ground sources.
Israel has been conducting airstrikes inside Syria since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, primarily targeting Hezbollah troops backed by Iran to stop them from transferring weapons or creating a foothold close to Israel’s borders.
Following the horrific slaughter carried out by Hamas on October 7, which resulted in around 1,200 Israeli deaths and 251 hostages, Israel has escalated its assaults on terrorist positions in Syria that receive support from Iran. It has also targeted Syrian air defenses and certain Syrian military.
According to diplomats, attempts to put an end to the Gaza War are essential to halting the conflict in Lebanon and averting a regional catastrophe.
