In a post on X, Israeli army claimed that it killed Safieddine as well as “Hossein Ali Al-Zima, head of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters, killed in an attack in Dahiyah in Beirut, along with other commanders in Hezbollah” in early October.
There has been no comment from Hezbollah yet on the Israeli army claims.
Earlier this month, a Lebanese security source told Al Jazeera that Hezbollah has lost contact with Safieddine, who was seen as a possible successor to Nasrallah, after an Israeli air raid on Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood.
As the chairman of the Lebanese group’s Executive Council, Safieddine is a very high-ranking member of the organisation and also Nasrallah’s cousin.
Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 43,000 people, most of them women and children, following an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last October.
More than 2,500 people have been killed and about 11,000 wounded in Lebanon in almost a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past weeks.
The international community has warned that Israeli attacks in Lebanon could escalate the Gaza conflict into a wider regional war.
