Potential Hezbollah leader out of contact since Friday, Lebanese source says

By Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Maayan Lubell

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The potential successor to slain Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike reported to have targeted him.

In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut's southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.

The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential area and Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.

Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine.

The loss of Nasrallah's rumoured successor would be another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah's leadership.

Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.

Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hezbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, in parallel to Israel's year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel had killed 440 Hezbollah fighters in its ground operations in southern Lebanon and destroyed 2,000 Hezbollah targets. Hezbollah has not released any death tolls.

Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hezbollah since last Oct. 8.

The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hezbollah's senior military leadership, including Nasrallah in an air attack on Sept. 27.

CIVILIAN DEATHS, DISPLACEMENT

The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people - almost a quarter of the population - to flee their homes.

Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 25 people and wounded 127 others the day before.

The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday's strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing, naming him as Saeed Atallah.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city that its warplanes also targeted during a 2006 war with Hezbollah.

It said in a later statement that it had killed two Hamas members operating in Lebanon, but did not say where they were killed. There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

Israel has meanwhile staged nightly bombardment of once-bustling Dahiyeh. On Saturday, smoke billowed over the residential area, much of which has been reduced to rubble.

In northern Israel, air raid sirens sent people running for their shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it had fired missiles at what it called "ATA company for military industries near Sakhnin base", close to the city of Haifa. It was not immediately clear what Hezbollah was referring to.

The Israeli army could not immediately be reached for comment but said two projectiles had crossed from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted while the other landed but caused no damage.

ISRAEL WEIGHS OPTIONS FOR IRAN

The violence comes as the anniversary approached of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, and displaced nearly all of the enclave's population of 2.3 million.

Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did little damage.

Israel has been weighing options for its response.

Hagari confirmed in a broadcast statement that two Israeli airbases were hit on Tuesday but remained operational. "The way in which we respond to this disgraceful attack will be in the manner, at the location and the timing which we decide, according to the political leadership's instructions," Hagari said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that no country would accept an attack on its citizens like Iran's on Israel. "Israel has the obligation and the right to defend itself and to retaliate against these attacks and that is what we will do," Netanyahu said.

Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian oil facilities.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil infrastructure.

Israeli media reported on Saturday that the top U.S. general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, had landed in Israel. Israeli and U.S. officials were not immediately reachable for comment.

(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Maya Gebeily, Timour Azhari and Laila Bassam in Beirut; Jaidaa Taha and Adam Makary in Cairo, Parisa Hafezi in Istanbul, Kanishka Singh, Phil Stewart, Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom in Washington, Tala Ramadan, Jana Choukeir, Maha El Dahan, Pesha Magid, Elwely Elwelly and Clauda Tanios in Dubai; Writing by William Mallard, John Davison and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Frances Kerry, Philippa Fletcher and Daniel Wallis)