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Israel kills Hezbollah chief Nasrallah, robbing Iran of top ally
By Maayan Lubell and Maya Gebeily
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Israel killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a powerful airstrike in Beirut, dealing a heavy blow to the Iran-backed group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had eliminated Nasrallah in the strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed, without saying how.
Nasrallah’s death is a major blow to both Hezbollah and Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran’s network of allied groups in the Arab world.
U.S. President Joe Biden described Nasrallah’s death as a measure of justice for what he called the Hezbollah chief’s many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese, and said the U.S. fully supported Israel’s right to self-defence.
A senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in the Israeli attacks in Beirut on Friday, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
Strikes continued on Beirut’s southern suburbs throughout the early evening on Saturday, according to a Reuters live broadcast, sending large clouds of smoke over the city.
The Israeli military said that in a strike on southern Beirut on Saturday it killed a senior member of Hezbollah’s intelligence, naming him as Hassan Khalil Yassin. Hezbollah made no mention so far of this.
In Israel, air raid sirens sounded across the centre of the country on Saturday – including Tel Aviv – and large bangs were heard after a missile was fired from Yemen and intercepted, according to the Israeli military.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it would continue its battle against Israel “in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defence of Lebanon and its steadfast and honourable people”.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his country was facing the threat of danger, without mentioning the death of Nasrallah. His office later announced three days of mourning for the Hezbollah chief.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Nasrallah’s killing would be avenged and his path in fighting Israel would be continued by other militants.
Hezbollah and Israel have been fighting a conflict in parallel with Israel’s war against Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last Oct. 7, a conflict that has sharply escalated in recent days.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV aired verses from the Koran after Nasrallah’s death was announced. Bursts of gunfire were heard in Beirut and Lebanon’s army deployed tanks in the city centre, according to Reuters witnesses.
Friday’s airstrike – a succession of massively powerful blasts that left a crater at least 20 metres (65 feet) deep – shook Beirut.
The Israeli military said Nasrallah was eliminated in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters beneath a residential building in Dahiyeh – a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.
It said he was killed along with another top Hezbollah leader, Ali Karaki, and other commanders.
“The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against (Israeli) citizens”, it said.
Nasrallah’s death is by far the largest blow in a devastating fortnight for Hezbollah, starting with a deadly attack on thousands of wireless communications devices used by its members.
Days later, Israel significantly ramped up airstrikes in Lebanon, killing several top Hezbollah commanders and hundreds of other people across wide areas of the country.
SUCCESSION
Many Hezbollah supporters were in disbelief on Saturday.
“He was leading us. He was everything to us. We were under his wings,” one supporter, Zahraa, told Reuters tearfully by phone from a school where she had been displaced to overnight.
Hezbollah gave no immediate indication of who might succeed Nasrallah. Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine has long been regarded as heir apparent. The group has not issued any statement on Safieddine’s status or that of any other Hezbollah leaders – apart from Nasrallah – since the attack.
Hezbollah continued its cross-border rocket fire on Saturday, setting off sirens and sending residents running for shelter deep inside Israel. Israeli missile defences blocked some of them and there was no immediate report of injuries.
The escalation has increased fears the conflict could spin out of control, potentially drawing in Iran, Hezbollah’s principal backer, as well as the United States.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s war was not with the Lebanese people, calling Nasrallah the “murderer of thousands of Israelis and foreign citizens”.
Hezbollah has been waging hostilities with Israel since the eruption of the Gaza war a year ago, when it opened fire declaring solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas.
Hezbollah has said it would cease fire only when Israel’s Gaza offensive ends. Hamas and other allies of Hezbollah issued statements mourning his death.
Russia said it strongly condemned Israel’s killing of Nasrallah and called on Israel to stop hostilities in Lebanon.
LEBANON ASKS IRANIAN PLANE NOT TO LAND
Residents fled Dahiyeh, seeking shelter in downtown Beirut and other parts of the city.
“Yesterday’s strikes were unbelievable. We had fled before and then went back to our homes, but then the bombing got more and more intense, so we came here, waiting for Netanyahu to stop the bombing,” said Dalal Daher, speaking near Beirut’s Martyrs Square, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel says it has been attacking Hezbollah with the aim of allowing tens of thousands of residents evacuated from northern Israel to return home. In Lebanon, well over 200,000 people have been displaced, around half of them since Monday.
Lebanon’s transport ministry asked an Iranian plane not to enter Lebanese airspace after Israel warned air traffic control at the Beirut airport that it would use “force” if it landed, a ministry source told Reuters. The source said it was not clear what was on the plane, adding: “The priority is people”.
After cutting short his visit to New York, Netanyahu was due to hold a security consultation upon his arrival in Israel on Saturday, an Israeli official said.
Late on Friday, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israeli air force planes were “patrolling the area of the Beirut airport” and would not allow “hostile flights with weapons to land” there.
Iran Air has cancelled all flights to Beirut until further notice, the airline’s spokesman told local media on Saturday.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and missiles at targets in Israel, including Tel Aviv, in recent weeks.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The population of Gaza has fallen 6% since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry.
As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47% of the total children under the age of 18, the PCBS said.
It added that Israel has “raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure… entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses.”
Israel’s foreign ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel”.
Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza because of the scale of death and destruction.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis has suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s Gaza campaign constitutes genocide.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.
The PCBS said some 22% of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.
Included in that 22% are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.
CARACAS (Reuters) -Venezuela’s economy grew over 9% in 2024, President Nicolas Maduro said, according to a transcript of an interview published by Mexican media outlet La Jornada on Wednesday.
“In 2023, we had 5.5% (growth). In 2024, according to all scientific, statistical, and technical data, we will surpass 9% growth in gross domestic product, with a very high level of growth in the real economy, as well as in the hydrocarbons sector,” Maduro told Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet.
Venezuela’s economy in recent years has experienced a prolonged crisis marked by triple-digit inflation and the exodus of millions of Venezuelans seeking better opportunities elsewhere.
In 2019, the government loosened controls on the private sector, allowing for an informal dollarization, which provided a lifeline to key sectors of the economy.
However, analysts believe the strategy has not been sufficient for a full economic recovery.
The interview with Maduro is set to air on Venezuelan state television on Wednesday evening.
By Brian Thevenot
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) -A driver crashed his pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year’s Day in New Orleans’ French Quarter and opened fire, killing 10 people and injuring more than 35, in an early morning attack the FBI said was a potential act of terrorism.
The suspect, described by one city leader as being in “full military gear,” died after a shootout with police, law enforcement officials said.
“This man was trying to run over as many people as he could,” Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said at a televised press conference on Wednesday. “He was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
The incident occurred at 3:15 a.m. (0915 GMT) at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Streets, a historic tourist destination in the city’s French Quarter known for attracting large crowds with its music and bars.
Kirkpatrick said the driver, who swerved around barricades, fired at police and struck two police officers from the vehicle after it crashed. The officers were in stable condition, she added.
“We know the perpetrator has been killed,” said New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas. “As we search for a motive, remember there is no making sense of evil.”
Officials did not immediately name the suspect.
NBC News, citing three unnamed senior law enforcement sources, identified the suspect as Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42.
NOLA.com, citing one unidentified law enforcement source, reported that same suspect was carrying an ISIS flag in the truck. Reuters was unable to verify the reports and the U.S. Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
More than 300 officers were on duty at the time of the incident, police said. The city hosts the Sugar Bowl, a classic American college football game, each New Year’s Day, and will also be the site of the NFL Super Bowl on Feb. 9.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called the incident a terrorist attack.
The FBI said in a statement that it was investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. Initially, Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, had said it was not a terrorist event.
Duncan said a suspected improvised explosive device was found but provided no further details.
“From what I understand, there is a potential that other suspects could be involved in this, and all hands on deck on determining who these individuals are and finding them,” New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno told 4WWLTV.
“Information that I received is that this individual was in full military gear, that he is apparently not local, and that he was prepared, and that he was very prepared to inflict horrific pain on the people on Bourbon Street,” Moreno said.
‘HORRIFIC ACT’
Verified video taken by an onlooker shows at least two twisted bodies in the street, with one of them lying in what appears to be a puddle of blood. A bystander is seen kneeling over one of the bodies as a group of uniformed military personnel in green uniforms and carrying firearms runs past.
The injured were taken to at least five hospitals, according to NOLA Ready, the city’s emergency preparedness department.
A couple told CBS News that they heard crashing noises coming from down the street and then saw a white truck slam through a barricade “at a high rate of speed”.
Zion Parsons (NYSE:), 18, told NOLA.com that he and his two friends were leaving a Bourbon Street eatery when they heard a commotion and saw a white car barreling toward them.
He said he dodged the vehicle, but one of his friends was struck, with her leg “twisted and contorted above and around her back.”
“You can just look and see bodies, just bodies of people, just bleeding, broken bones,” he said.
Louisiana U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy said on CNN that despite the attack, law enforcement in New Orleans was ready for the Sugar Bowl on Wednesday night. “The Superdome has been locked down,” he said.
In response to vehicle attacks on pedestrian malls around the world, New Orleans was in the process of removing and replacing the steel barriers known as bollards that restrict vehicle traffic in the Bourbon Street pedestrian zone. The project’s status was unclear at the time of Wednesday’s attack.
Construction began in November 2024 and was scheduled to continue through February 2025, according to a city website.
Last month in Germany, a 50-year-old man was charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder after police said he plowed a car through crowds at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring scores.
President Joe Biden called the city’s mayor to offer full federal support. President-elect Donald Trump said his incoming administration would help New Orleans as it investigates and recovers from what he called an act of pure evil.
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