Hezbollah confirms Hashem’s martyrdom

Hezbollah announced on Wednesday that Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, the head of the Lebanese resistance movement’s Executive Council, was martyred in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut earlier this month.

“We pledge to our great martyr and his martyred brothers to continue the path of resistance and jihad (struggle) until achieving its goals of freedom and victory,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that Safieddine was killed during a strike on October 04, 2024.

Safieddine was widely expected to be formally elected as the next Hezbollah leader after Israel assassinated Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last month. 

Israel killed Nasrallah, who was the movement’s chief since 1992, in an airstrike on a neighborhood in southern Beirut on September 27, 2024.

US media acknowledged that Israel used American-made 900kg (2,000-pound) bombs in the strike that killed Nasrallah and levelled residential buildings in Beirut’s suburb of Dahieh.

Israel has killed multiple Hezbollah commanders amid the exchanges of fire with the resistance group since October 8, 2023. That is a day after Israel launched its war of genocide in Gaza. Hezbollah has carried out attacks against Israel in a show of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel also launched a massive bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23 this year and launched a ground incursion into southern Lebanon on October 1.

Israel has killed about 2,500 people in Lebanon since October last year, including 1,800 in the past few weeks.

In response to Israel’s attacks, Hezbollah has intensified its retaliatory operations targeting strategic military sites in Tel Aviv and Haifa.  

The resistance movement’s reprisal strikes have spread a growing sense of panic among Israelis keeping the regime on its toes.