Israel kills another senior Hezbollah official

2024-09-29 13:09:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Israel's military said on Sunday it had killed another senior Hezbollah official in an airstrike, continuing to deal a devastating blow to the Lebanese militant group after it killed its militant leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Friday.

The Israeli military said Nabil Kaouk, deputy chairman of Hezbollah's Central Council, was killed on Saturday.

Hezbollah has not yet commented on the news, while it is not known where the attack took place.

Several senior Hezbollah commanders have been killed in Israeli strikes in recent weeks, including founding members of the group who had avoided death or arrest for decades and were close to Nasrallah. Hezbollah is both a militant group and a political party that controls most of southern Lebanon. It has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States, while the European Union has blacklisted its armed wing, but not its political party.

Hezbollah was also the target of a sophisticated attack on its communications equipment, which was widely blamed on Israel.

A wave of Israeli airstrikes in 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 forced to flee their homes in Lebanon due to recent attacks.

Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, but most of them have been destroyed or landed in open areas, causing few casualties and minor damage.

Kaouk was a veteran Hezbollah member from 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 commented on political and security developments, and gave speeches at the funerals of senior militants. The United States had announced sanctions against it in 2020. Hezbollah began attacking northern Israel with rockets and drones after the attack that Hamas - the Palestinian group declared a terrorist organization by the US and the EU - carried out in southern Israel on October 7, i which fueled Israel's war in Gaza.

Hezbollah and Hamas are allies that consider themselves part of an Iranian-backed "Axis of Resistance" against Israel.

Israel has responded to Hezbollah with waves of airstrikes, and the conflict has gradually escalated to the brink of an all-out war, raising fears of an all-out war in the region.

Israel says it is determined to return some 60,000 Israeli citizens to communities in the north that were evacuated nearly a year ago.

Hezbollah has said it will stop the rocket attacks only if there is a ceasefire in Gaza. But achieving a ceasefire in Gaza seems difficult, despite indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt./ Rel