Gunfire erupted in Beirut after Hezbollah announced the death of Nasrallah — a gesture to mark martyrdom, believed by Muslims to be one of the highest honors in Islam. In the Dahiyeh neighborhood of southern Beirut, where Nasrallah was killed in the Israeli strike, mourners cried and chanted.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared five days of national mourning following Nasrallah’s death, and warned that Israel faces “crushing blows” to come. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis declared three days of public mourning in the country. The Syrian government also condemned the killing.
The Israel Defense Forces has said it struck 140 Hezbollah targets since Friday night. The military carried out fresh airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, including in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, it said on Saturday. According to the IDF, a senior Hezbollah intelligence leader, Hassan Khalil Yassin, was killed in one of the airstrikes.
A senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander was also killed in the Friday strike that targeted Nasrallah, Iranian state media said. Lebanese people have criticized IDF warnings to stay away from Hezbollah targets, saying there is no way for them to know where the secretive organization might be operating.
Families from heavily populated Beirut neighborhoods have been seen fleeing with their belongings, joining the tens of thousands of people who the Lebanese government says are already internally displaced due to the fighting. The number of those killed in Lebanon since Israeli attacks escalated last week has reached at least 1,030, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Hezbollah will almost certainly respond to the killing of its leader, according to Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official specializing in the region, and Iran is likely to play a role. “The response is likely to be big enough that the odds it will prompt a full-scale war will skyrocket,” Panikoff said.
A senior US official told CNN that the US believes Iran will intervene in the conflict if it determines that it is about to “lose” Hezbollah, its most powerful proxy group. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called for all sides to “step back from the brink.”
Some officials in the United States — which, like many of its Western allies, designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organization — have applauded the killing of Nasrallah. US President Joe Biden said his death is a “measure of justice for his many victims,” including Americans, while calling for de-escalation in conflicts across the Middle East. The US State Department on Saturday ordered certain employees and their family members to depart Lebanon.
