By Humeyra Pamuk, Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
TEL AVIV/JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – Israel on Tuesday confirmed it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was previously killed in an Israeli attack last month on the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group.
The military said Safieddine was killed in a strike carried out three weeks ago in Beirut’s southern suburbs, its first confirmation of his death. Earlier this month, Israel said he had probably been eliminated.
There was no immediate response from Hezbollah to Israel’s statement that it had killed Safieddine.
Israel has been carrying out an escalating offensive after a year of border clashes with Hezbollah, which is reeling from a spate of killings of its senior commanders in Israeli airstrikes. The group is the most formidably armed of Iran’s proxy forces across the Middle East and has been acting in support of Palestinian militants fighting Israel in Gaza.
A relative of Nasrallah, Safieddine was appointed to its Jihad Council – the body responsible for its military operations – and to its executive council, overseeing Hezbollah’s financial and administrative affairs.
Safieddine assumed a prominent role speaking for Hezbollah during the last year of hostilities with Israel, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long been unable to attend for security reasons.
Israeli strikes have been pummelling Lebanon’s south, eastern Bekaa Valley and southern suburbs of Beirut – all Hezbollah strongholds. The group’s fighters have been trying to push back Israeli ground incursions.
Israel has so far shown no sign of relenting in its Gaza and Lebanon campaigns even after assassinating several leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, which lost Nasrallah, its powerful secretary-general, in a Sept. 27 airstrike.
Diplomats say Israel aims to lock in a strong position before a new U.S. administration takes over following the Nov. 5 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.
BLINKEN ON MIDEAST TOUR
Israel’s confirmation of Safieddine’s death came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to capitalise on the killing of Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar by securing the release of the Oct. 7 attack hostages and ending the war in Gaza.
After repeated abortive attempts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Blinken was making his 11th trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war erupted – and the last before a presidential election that could upend U.S. policy.
Blinken was also seeking ways to defuse the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where overnight at least 18 people were killed, including four children, and 60 injured by an Israeli airstrike near Beirut’s main state hospital.
Blinken faced an uphill struggle on both fronts.
He spelled out U.S. hopes that the death of Hamas leader Sinwar – blamed for triggering a year of devastating warfare by planning the deadly militant assault from Gaza on Israeli territory on Oct. 7 last year – will provide a new opportunity for peace.
“The Secretary underscored the need to capitalise on Israel’s successful action to bring Yahya Sinwar to justice by securing the release of all hostages and ending the conflict in Gaza in a way that provides lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement on the Jerusalem meetings.
In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said Sinwar’s elimination “may have a positive effect on the return of the hostages, the achievement of all the goals of the war, and the day after the war”.
But there was no mention of a possible ceasefire after a year of war in which Hamas’ military capabilities have been greatly degraded and Gaza largely reduced to rubble, with most of its 2.3 million Palestinians displaced.
Western allies of Israel see Sinwar’s killing last week as a potential breakthrough by providing Netanyahu’s far-right government political cover to assert that its objectives have been achieved in Gaza.
But Israel has maintained that it will not stop fighting until the Palestinian Islamist militant group has been utterly destroyed as a military force and governing entity in Gaza.
For its part, Hamas has refused to free scores of hostages in Gaza seized in its Oct. 7, 2023 raid on Israel without an Israeli pledge to end the war and pull out of the territory.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Laila Bassam, Maya Gebeily and Amina Ismail in Beirut, Clauda Tanios and Nayera Abdullah in Dubai, Maayan Lubell and Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem, Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis in Washington, Thomas Escritt in Berlin; writing by Michael Georgy, Mark Heinrich and Deepa Babington; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Peter Graff, Ros Russell and David Gregorio)
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