IDF Targets Senior Hezbollah Leadership, Engages Ground Forces

The IDF announced on Friday afternoon that Muhammad Rashid Sakafi, who commanded Hezbollah's communications division, was eliminated in an airstrike in Beirut on Thursday. The announcement followed unconfirmed reports of the elimination of Hashem Safieddine, the likely successor to slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike in Beirut just before midnight on Thursday. At least two other senior Hezbollah officials were in a meeting with Safieddine when the airstrike hit the bunker they were in.

Safieddine is Nasrallah's cousin and holds several important positions in the organization, making him a likely candidate to be its next leader. He was targetted along with several other Hezbollah officials and other strategic targets in southern Beirut's suburbs on Thursday evening.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said “more than 10 consecutive strikes have been recorded so far, in one of the strongest raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli war on Lebanon.”

Hezbollah also fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel over the last 24 hours, causing some damage and fires but no casualties.

The IDF announced another soldier killed in action Friday, bringing the total number of its soldiers killed in Lebanon to nine since the ground incursion began. It also announced that a 3.5 km tunnel running under the border between Lebanon and Syria, used to smuggle Iranian-built weapons to Hezbollah, had been demolished. The IDF also hit the Masnaa Border Crossing between Lebanon and Syria Thursday evening following intelligence assessments that it was being used to move weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited the headquarters of the 36th Division on the Lebanese border Friday morning, giving the troops, and the general public, a pep talk.

“Hezbollah is receiving very severe blows, one after the other," he declared. "We eliminated Nasrallah and we have more surprises in store, some of which have already been carried out and some of which will be carried out. [Hezbollah’s] missile and rocket division suffered a very heavy blow. A significant part was destroyed as a result of a high-quality and precise operation. Command and control headquarters, communications, the entire leadership of [the elite Radwan Force], and in fact the entire second and third tiers of command below Nasrallah were eliminated."

Now, the IDF is “carrying out an operation today in several villages, and this process will continue wherever necessary to destroy all the infrastructure from which Hezbollah planned to carry out attacks.”