Israel bombs Beirut: who is Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader targeted in the raid

They were looking for him, Hassan Nasrallahbut his fate is not yet clear: according to the Israeli media, the leader of the Lebanese party Hezbollah is injured, and his daughter Zainab died in the raid on Beirut between the night of September 27th and the morning of the 28th. According to the Iranian ones, he is alive and safe in an undisclosed location. Sources close to Hezbollah, writes Reuters, give Nasrallah as “unreachable”. The Israeli army has meanwhile confirmed the death of Muhammad Ali Ismail, head of Hezbollah’s missile unit, and his deputy Hussein Ahmad Ismail

The certainties instead concern the grandeur ofmost powerful airstrike since the start of Israeli retaliation for the attack on October 7, 2023. After 6pm yesterday, army spokesman Daniel Hagari announced a “massive raid” on Hezbollah’s central command in Beirut. The definitive go-ahead would have been given by the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahuwho was in New York, shortly before participating in the UN General Assembly, where among other things he defined the institution as an “anti-Semitic swamp” by displaying signs with the “good” and “bad” Muslim countries , while many representatives of non-Western countries left the room in protest.

During the night, Israeli fighters dropped dozens of bombs on the headquarters of the armed group, because intelligence reported the presence of Hezbollah’s leadership. The result is that at least six buildings, but there could be more, collapsed causing dozens of injuries and so far six certain victims. Much of the neighborhood around Dahiyeh, south Beirut, was destroyed. The Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, accused the Israeli government of waging a “war of extermination” in the country. Meanwhile, Hagari issued a statement saying that Israel is still examining the results of the raid and that “we will provide updates as soon as we are able to do so. Our attack was very precise.” While Netanyahu, informed, quickly left the UN and returned, the Biden administration clarified that “The US neither participated nor knew”, and that they were only notified once the attack had begun. Iran also immediately reacted after the attack: the Iranian embassy in Lebanon wrote on Ali Khameneicalled an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council.

The Dahiyeh neighborhood in Beirut, site of the Israeli attack, destroyed

ANWAR AMRO/Getty Images

But who is Hassan or Hasan Nasrallah? Born in Beirut on 31 August 1960 into a poor family, with eight brothers, as a young man he was a theology student in Najaf, Iraq, which he then left following the persecution of the Shiites in the country by the then president Saddam Hussein , Sunni. 1982 was the turning point: at the age of 22 he joined the founding nucleus of Hezbollah, of which he would become leader in 1992. Since then very little has been known about him: although he always appears on TV with his black turban (that of the Sayyed, the descendants of Muhammad), over time he gave only two interviews. We know he’s married, ha five childrenspeaks fluent Farsi, and said he loves football, in particular Maradonaand that he also played as a boy. As Israel withdrew from the south of the country in 2000, after 22 years of occupation and the Lebanese war, Nasrallah continued to arm Hezbollah. Weapons that have been used since October 7 to open a war front to the north of Israel in support of its ally Hamas.

After the explosion of thousands of walkie talkies and pagers ten days ago the leader Nasrallah had appeared on TV againalso announcing an internal party investigation to ferret out the moles in Mossad’s “technological coup”, but there has been silence for a few days. And some Lebanese sources claim that he may have even fled the country days before the raid. In the meantime, Hezbollah, via its al Manar TV, launched a message after the attack: “The entire Hezbollah community will continue to resist the criminal Zionist attacks.”