The Israeli army on Tuesday said, one of its airstrikes outside Beirut earlier this month, neutralized a top Hezbollah official who had been widely expected to be the group’s next leader.
Though, there was no immediate official confirmation from the terror organization about the fate of Hashem Safieddine.
Safieddine, a powerful cleric within the party ranks, was expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, who was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in September.
According to the military, Safieddine was killed alongside the head of the Lebanese terror group’s intelligence division, Hussein Ali Hazima, during the strike on October 4.
The strike had targeted Hezbollah’s underground intelligence headquarters in Beirut, which the army said was “in the heart of a civilian population” in the Lebanese capital’s southern suburb, known as Dahiyeh.
The IDF said that more than 25 members of Hezbollah’s intelligence division were at the headquarters when the strike was carried out, including other top commanders.
Safieddine had been out of contact since the strike, but it was only on Tuesday that the IDF said it could confirm his death.
“We reached [Hassan] Nasrallah, his replacement, and most of Hezbollah’s leadership. We will know how to reach anyone who threatens the security of Israel’s citizens,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said in remarks provided by the military.
Safieddine, whom the US State Department designated as a terrorist in 2017, was a cousin of Nasrallah and, like him, was a cleric who wore the black turban denoting ostensible descent from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, Times of Israel reported.
Grey-bearded and bespectacled, Safieddine bore a striking resemblance to Nasrallah but was several years his junior, aged in his late 50s or early 60s.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP in early October that the deeply religious cleric Safieddine, who had good relations with Hezbollah backer Iran, was the “most likely” candidate for the party’s top job.
Moreover, Safieddine assumed a prominent role in speaking for Hezbollah during the past year, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long avoided for security reasons.
He was the first Hezbollah official to speak in public after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, telling a rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs on October 8, 2023, that the group’s “guns and our rockets are with you. Everything we have is with you.”