The News
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut, the Lebanese group confirmed on Saturday.
Nasrallah had led the Iran-backed group — a dominant political party in Lebanon, as well as a paramilitary organization — since 1992, and his killing is the latest in a push by Israel to target senior leaders of Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“It’s hard to overstate just how extraordinary this is,” the Middle East analyst Charles Lister wrote on X, “a vast spread of Hezbollah’s military leadership is gone.”
The killing raised worries that the nearly year-long Israeli war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, would expand further into an all-out regional conflict enveloping not simply Lebanon but Hezbollah’s backer in Tehran.