(Bloomberg) -- Israel said Hashem Safieddine, a likely successor to assassinated Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, has probably been killed as well.
Safieddine “has apparently been eliminated,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday in comments aired by Israel’s Channel 12.
Multiple Lebanese reports said Safieddine was at Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in the Lebanese capital of Beirut when Israel bombed it last week as part of its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group.
Gallant said Safieddine’s apparent death — which hasn’t been announced by Hezbollah or formally by the Israeli military — underscored how the group’s leadership has almost been totally wiped out.
“There is no one to make decisions,” Gallant said. “It will take another day, another week, another two weeks, and when the smoke and fog clear, they will understand in Iran that they have lost their most valued asset — which is Hezbollah.”
Still, Hezbollah’s deputy chief, Naim Qasem, on Tuesday said it won’t back down from striking Israeli territory or fighting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
“What’s been said by the enemy about our capabilities is an illusion,” he said. “Our fighters are on the front, we’re solid.”
Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah since the early 1990s, was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut on Sept. 27.
Safieddine is a cousin of Nasrallah and became head of Hezbollah’s executive council in 1992. Born in Lebanon in 1964, Safieddine was named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US in 2017.
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