Hezbollah leader's death won't go unavenged: Iran

FE Team | Published: September 29, 2024 22:16:17

JERUSALEM, Sept 29 (AFP/BBC/AP): Iran's supreme leader has said the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah "will not go unavenged", a day after he was killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced five days of mourning in Iran in response to what he called the "martyrdom of the great Nasrallah", describing him as "a path and a school of thought" that would continue.
Iranian media reported that a Iranian Revolutionary Guards general was also killed in the Israeli strikes in Beirut on Friday.
Israel's military said Nasrallah had "the blood of thousands... on his hands", and that it targeted him while he was "commanding more imminent attacks".
There are fears that the strike could plunge the wider region into war, after nearly a year of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah sparked by the 7 October attacks and war in the Gaza Strip.
Key to what happens next in the Middle East is what Ayatollah Khamenei decides.
So far, he and other senior Iranian figures have refrained from vowing to retaliate for the series of severe and humiliating blows that Israel has dealt Hezbollah in recent weeks, seemingly because Iran does not want a war with its arch-enemy.
Israel raids 'dozens' of
Hezbollah targets
The Israeli military said on Sunday it conducted strikes against "dozens" of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, two days after an air strike killed the group's chief Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israel Defense Forces "attacked dozens of terrorist targets in the territory of Lebanon in the last few hours," the army said in a statement on Telegram.
The statement said the strikes targeted "buildings where weapons and military structures of the organisation were stored".
Israel has attacked "hundreds" of Hezbollah targets in the last day, it added, as it aims to disable the group.
On Friday, an Israeli air strike on a suburb of Beirut killed Hezbollah's longtime leader Nasrallah, sparking fears of an all-out war in the region.
Iran Guard general died
with Hezbollah leader
A prominent general in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard died in an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Iranian media reported Saturday.
The killing of Gen. Abbas Nilforushan marks the latest casualty suffered by Iran as the nearly yearlong Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip teeters on the edge of becoming a regional conflict. His death further ratchets up pressure on Iran to respond, even as Tehran has signaled in recent months that it wants to negotiate with the West over sanctions crushing its economy.
Nilforushan, 58, was killed Friday in the strike in Lebanon in which Nasrallah died, the state-owned newspaper Tehran Times reported. Ahmad Reza Pour Khaghan, the deputy head of Iran's judiciary, also confirmed Nilforushan's death, describing him as a "guest to the people of Lebanon," the state-run IRNA news agency said.
Khaghan also reportedly said that Iran had the right to retaliate under international law.
UN sends emergency
food aid for Lebanese
The World Food Programme on Sunday said it had launched an emergency operation to provide meals for one million people affected by the escalating conflict in Lebanon.
"A further acceleration of the conflict this weekend underscored the need for an immediate humanitarian response," the Rome-based agency said in a statement, announcing that it was distributing ready-to-eat food rations, bread, hot meals and food parcels to shelters across the country.
Israel on Sunday said that it was carrying out new air strikes on dozens of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, two days after killing the Iran-backed group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in bombing raids outside Beirut.
His killing marked a sharp escalation in nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah since the latter's Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.