Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed on Friday during a large Israeli airstrike on a secret underground bunker in southern Beirut. The strike, carried out by the Israeli Air Force (IAF), also led to the deaths of several other senior Hezbollah members.
According to reports, the attack was meticulously planned and executed with the help of multiple intelligence agencies. The bunker, where Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders had gathered to discuss their strategy against Israel, was located more than 60 feet underground. It was heavily fortified, but Israel used advanced “bunker-buster” bombs designed to penetrate deep into reinforced structures.
The Israeli military said nearly 80 tons of explosives were used in the operation, including 85 bunker-buster bombs, which can pierce through up to 30 meters of earth or six meters of concrete.
“Everything we planned was executed precisely," said the commander of IAF’s 69th Squadron. He described the operation as smooth, with no errors in intelligence, planning, or execution, reported the Times of Israel.
Nasrallah’s death was confirmed by Hezbollah, though the group did not reveal the exact cause of his death. A medical source later told Reuters that Nasrallah’s body was found intact, and the likely cause of death was blunt trauma from the explosion.
The Israeli military had been stepping up its operations in Lebanon, conducting over 2,000 airstrikes in the country prior to Friday’s attack. The airstrike not only killed Nasrallah but also destroyed Hezbollah’s key military assets, including important electronic equipment and missile caches.
Israeli officials revealed that the attack had been in the planning stages for months, with intelligence confirming Nasrallah’s presence in the bunker during the strike. Israeli spokesperson Nadav Shoshani stated, “We had intelligence that Nasrallah was meeting with senior terrorists, and we acted accordingly.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised the strike while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In his speech, Netanyahu condemned terrorism and stated that the removal of Nasrallah was “essential to achieving our goals.”
The death of Nasrallah marks a significant moment in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which has already displaced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border. The United Nations reported that over 200,000 Lebanese civilians have been displaced in the past week, with numbers expected to rise as the violence continues.
Israel has vowed to continue its military operations against Hezbollah until the group stops its attacks.
