BEIRUT (AFP) – Israel said yesterday it killed another senior Hezbollah official in an air strike on the Lebanese capital.
Israel announced the killing of Nabil Qaouq, a member of Hezbollah’s central council in a strike on Saturday, as its air force continued to hit “dozens” more targets around Lebanon yesterday.
The past week’s waves of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon have plunged the tiny Mediterranean country and the wider region into fear of even more violence to come.
Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s killing in a massive strike on Friday on the group’s main bastion in south Beirut.
“We all started crying,” Maha Karit told AFP in Beirut after Nasrallah’s death.
With Lebanon already mired in political and economic crisis, the escalation has pushed it to the brink, as the bombardment has killed over 700 people in a week, according to Health Ministry figures. The Israeli military said yesterday its air force had struck “dozens of Hezbollah terror targets” after carrying out “hundreds” of strikes on Friday and Saturday.
It then announced that Qaouq was “struck and eliminated” in a strike on south Beirut on Saturday.
Hezbollah has yet to officially announce Qaouq’s death but a source close to the group said he had been killed.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported a string of raids in and around the city of Baalbek in the east.
At least six people were killed in a strike on a house in the northeastern Hermel region, the agency reported, while an emergency response group affiliated with Hezbollah ally the Amal movement said five of its rescuers were killed in the south.
Hezbollah said its fighters launched “a volley of Fadi-1” rockets at an Israeli base in the Golan Heights early yesterday. Yesterday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also vowed that the killing of its Revolutionary Guards general Abbas Nilforoushan alongside Nasrallah would “not go unanswered”.
Hamas condemned Nasrallah’s killing as a “cowardly terrorist act”, while Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Syria all declared public mourning.
Allied armed groups across the region like Yemen’s Huthi rebels, already drawn into the Gaza war, have vowed action against Israel.
Most of the deaths in Lebanon came last Monday, the deadliest day of violence since the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.
United Nations refugee chief Filippo Grandi said “well over 200,000 people are displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Syria.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati however warned the figure could be much higher, saying up to one million people may have been forced from their homes.
It was potentially the “largest displacement movement” in the country’s history, he said.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it had launched an emergency operation to provide meals and support for “up to one million people” affected by the escalation.
“Lebanon is at a breaking point and cannot endure another war,” said WFP regional director Corinne Fleischer.
Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink.
In Gaza, AFP correspondents reported several air strikes during the night and shelling from a navy boat.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said an Israeli strike killed at least three Palestinians in a house in Gaza City, with three more killed in two separate strikes in the territory’s north and centre.
