Tel Aviv 29 September 2024 by Kheila Jabril
The bomb Israel used to kill former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last week was an American-made guided weapon, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, chairman of the Senate Air Force Subcommittee on US Armed Services, told NBC.
Israel used a 2,000-pound Mark 84, Kelly said.Israel carried out an air strike overnight near the Kola Crossing in central Beirut, the Guardian reported, noting that it was the first time Israel had struck Beirut outside its southern suburbs since the war began. The sound of the explosion was heard across the city. The Kola Crossing is a popular landmark in Beirut, where taxis and buses gather to pick up passengers.
Initial images of the raid showed two floors of an apartment building completely destroyed. Until now, Israel had limited its attacks on the Lebanese capital to its southern suburbs. A Lebanese security source said at least two people were killed in the raid. According to this source, "they were killed in an Israeli drone strike that targeted an apartment belonging to Jamaa Islamiya. This Lebanese Islamist group supports Hezbollah in its operations in northern Israel.
Hezbollah's Shura Council, the Lebanese Shiite group's central decision-making body, has chosen Hashem Safieddine to replace Hassan Nasrallah as Hezbollah's leader, Haaretz and Al Arabya reported. Safieddine hails from Deir Qanoun al-Nahr, a village in southern Lebanon, and was born into a prominent Shiite family known for producing influential clerics and parliamentarians. He is a cousin of Nasrallah and has family ties to Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran's Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020.
Hassan Nasrallah's funeral, scheduled for tomorrow, has been canceled.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the US military to bolster its presence in the Middle East with "defensive" air support capabilities and has placed other armed forces on a state of heightened readiness. Austin "increased the readiness of additional U.S. forces to be deployed, elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies," the Pentagon said. "Austin made clear that if Iran, its partners or allies were to use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take all necessary measures to defend our people."
The Israeli army today carried out violent raids against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon in which at least 105 people died. The new death toll was drawn up in the evening by the Lebanese Ministry of Health. The wounded are 359.
The report of the day:
"Those who want to harm the Jewish state will pay a heavy price." The words long repeated by the Israeli Prime Minister, his Defense Minister and the head of the army have become reality: during the night between Saturday and Sunday, the planes with the Star of David (IAF) hit the 'ring of fire' hard, the strategy designed to suffocate the Jewish state by Iranian General Soleimani, killed by the US in 2020. A plan supported above all by Hassan Nasrallah and pursued by militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the West Bank, Gaza and Yemen.
On Sunday, the reaction against the Houthis, expected for days, after they fired surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and drones in September. The army (IDF) inflicted a new, powerful blow to Tehran's allies in Yemen: dozens of planes flew up to 1,800 kilometers from the Israeli border to hit the ports of Hodeidah and Ras Issa, used for the supply of weapons and oil. The IAF confirmed that it launched raids against sites used by the group for military purposes in the main port on the Red Sea and the nearby terminal of Ras Issa. Four dead and wounded according to local authorities. Hodeidah international airport was also targeted, where the ayatollahs' cargo ships bring in loads of weapons. The same ones with which the Houthis have been attacking commercial ships in transit for almost a year.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stressed that "no place is too far for Israel". And this is the second attack in Yemen, after July 20, responding to a drone launched on Tel Aviv, which had caused a victim, Tsahal had bombed the port of Hodeidah which had caused a colossal fire. Benyamin Netanyahu's retaliation continued during the day in Lebanon where, since the 17th of this month, practically the entire leadership of Hezbollah has been 'eliminated'. The IDF announced that in the attack on Friday on the Beirut headquarters of the Lebanese fundamentalist group, in addition to the leader of the Party of God, 20 commanders were also killed, including Ali Karaki, commander of the southern front, Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, head of Nasrallah's personal security, advisor Samir Tawfiq Deeb, Abd al-Amir Muhammad Sablini, responsible for strengthening military forces, Ali Nayef Ayoub, head of Hezbollah's firepower. The IDF published a map of the bombed area where only 53 meters away there was a school run by the United Nations. The Lebanese media instead showed the video with the recovery of Nasrallah's body, 'intact', pulled out of the crater left by the IDF's bunker-busting bombs. Not only that: during the night between Saturday and Sunday, Israeli fighters again targeted the Shiite stronghold, killing Nabil Kawak, commander of the militia's security unit and member of the Central Executive Council. The IAF pilots then turned their sights on Syria, in Homs, where they hit, according to the Human Rights Monitoring Center, a vehicle with pro-Iranian Iraqi militias.
On the Gaza front, a new raid destroyed a Hamas command center in a former school in the north of the Strip with precision missiles. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned again of the "dangerous consequences" of the attacks.
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