Olayomi Koiki
The crisis in the Middle East takes another turn as Israel’s military said it killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an air strike on Beirut on Friday evening.
Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah have been edging closer to outright war for weeks.
Hezbollah has yet to comment on its leader’s whereabouts or health.
Nasrallah, 64, has led Hezbollah since the early 1990s and is close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He’s integral to Tehran’s network of proxy forces in the Middle East.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and military-resistance organization, that also provides social welfare and religious education services.
Hezbollah is considered the crown jewel in what’s often referred to as Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel and US forces in the region.
The strike on Hezbollah’s HQ came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where he vowed to press ahead with efforts to degrade Hezbollah. His comments cast fresh doubt on the prospects of a US-led push for a cease-fire.
The longer the fighting continues, the greater the chance that either Israel or Hezbollah miscalculates and sparks a broader war, according to a person familiar with the US stance.