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In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.
The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential area and Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.
Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine.
Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.
Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel has been weighing options for its response to the Iranian missile attack last week.
“The way in which we respond to this disgraceful attack will be in the manner, at the location and the timing which we decide, according to the political leadership’s instructions,” Hagari said.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian oil facilities.
US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil infrastructure.
Iran FM threatens stronger retaliation
Tehran’s top diplomat in Damascus on Saturday threatened an “even stronger” reaction to any aggression, as Israel readied its response to the Iranian missile attack.
“Our reaction to any attack by the Zionist regime is completely clear,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in the Syrian capital.
Araghchi renewed his call for ceasefires in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon.
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