Hezbollah claimed Wednesday that Israel had struck and killed Hashem Safieddine, the group’s presumed heir to leader Hassan Nasrallah, but it did not specify the time or location of the attack.
The declaration was made a day after Israel claimed that he and other Hezbollah officials were killed three weeks ago in an airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The group declared in a statement, “We mourn … the head of the Executive Council of Hezbollah, his eminence the scholar Sayyed Hashem Safieddine,” adding that he and other Hezbollah fighters were slain in “a criminal and aggressive Zionist raid.”
Following Nasrallah’s killing on September 27 in a massive Israeli airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, Safieddine, a cleric with family ties to Nasrallah, was widely considered the most likely candidate for the party’s top position.
Having studied religion at Iran’s holy city of Qom, Safieddine, a member of the group’s ruling Shura Council, has deep ties to Iran.
In 2017, he was added to the lists of “terrorists” by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Israel said it murdered Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza last week. Israeli police published a video showing Sinwar slumped in a dust-covered chair, captured by an Israeli micro drone that traced him as he lay dying amid the wreckage of a building in southern Gaza.
