Jerusalem: The Israeli military said Sunday that it killed another high-ranking Hezbollah official in an airstrike. The military said Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah's Central Council, was killed in an airstrike on Saturday. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
Several senior Hezbollah commanders have been killed in Israeli strikes in recent weeks, including the group's overall leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut on Friday. Hezbollah has continued to fire hundreds of rockets and missiles into northern Israel, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas. Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah going back to the 1980s and had previously served as Hezbollah's military commander in southern Lebanon. The United States had announced sanctions against him in 2020.
Hezbollah has also been targeted by a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel. A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon has killed at least 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon by the latest strikes. The government estimates that around 250,000 are in shelters, with three to four times as many staying with friends or relatives, or camping out on the streets, Environment Minister Nasser Yassin told The Associated Press.
Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets and missiles into northern Israel, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas, causing few casualties and only scattered damage.
Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah going back to the 1980s and served as Hezbollah's military commander in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel. He often appeared in local media, where he would comment on politics and security developments, and he gave eulogies at the funerals of senior militants. The United States had announced sanctions against him in 2020.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies that consider themselves part of an Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” against Israel.
Israel has responded with waves of airstrikes, and the conflict has steadily ratcheted up to the brink of all-out war, raising fears of a region-wide conflagration.
Israel says it is determined to return some 60,000 of its citizens to communities in the north that were evacuated nearly a year ago. Hezbollah has said it will only halt its rocket fire if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which has proven elusive despite months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said that the Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah was a measure of justice" for victims of a four-decade reign of terror.
The comments came after Lebanon's Hezbollah group confirmed earlier Saturday that Nasrallah, one of the group's founders, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut the previous day. Biden noted that the operation to take out Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas' massacre of Israelis on Oct 7, 2023.
