Nasrallah's potential successor 'killed'

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM:

A high-level Hezbollah source said on Saturday that contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely touted as potentially the group's next leader, had been lost following Israeli strikes this week.

Responding to the AFP report, the group said in a statement that there were "no Hezbollah sources and our viewpoint is issued in official statements". It did not confirm or deny whether contact with Safieddine was lost.

"Contact with Sayyed Safieddine has been lost since the violent strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs" early on Friday, the official told AFP.

"We don't know if he was at the targeted site, or who may have been there with him," he added.

A second source close to Hezbollah also confirmed that communication had been cut off with Safieddine and that his whereabouts were unknown.

Hezbollah "is trying to reach the underground headquarters that were targeted, but every single time Israel starts striking again to impede rescue efforts," he said.

Safieddine "was with Hezbollah's head of intelligence," known as Hajj Murtada, when the strikes took place, he said.

Both sources requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Early on Friday, a source close to Hezbollah said Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group's south Beirut stronghold, in one of the most powerful raids since Israel intensified its campaign of bombardment last week.

AFP footage showed giant balls of flame and thick smoke rising from the site that was attacked.

Israel's military said it had hit "targets belonging to Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters in Beirut".

The attack came a week after the Israeli military said it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in air strikes on the group's headquarters in south Beirut.

Israel was preparing a military response to Iran's missile attack this week that heightened fears of a wider regional war, an Israeli official said Saturday, as fighting raged in Lebanon and in Gaza.

The Israeli military official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the issue publicly, said the army "is preparing a response to the unprecedented and unlawful Iranian attack".

He did not elaborate on the nature or timing of the response, which analysts and Israeli media said would likely be designed to deal an immense blow to Iran, despite international calls for de-escalation and warnings from Tehran it would retaliate.

Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, told AFP that both Israel and Iran were "taking huge gambles".

"Everything right now hinges on Israel's response," he said.

Hezbollah said Saturday its fighters were confronting Israeli troops in Lebanon's southern border region, where the Israeli military said it struck militants inside a mosque in Bint Jbeil, a focus of this week's fighting.

The Israeli military said its forces were engaged in "limited, localised" raids in southern Lebanon, though the scale of their operations was not immediately clear.

The army reported frequent rocket fire from Lebanon, some of which was intercepted by air defences, as Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel's Ramat David air base, about 45 kilometres (30 miles) from the frontier.

The Lebanese group also said it fired rockets at a "military industries company" near Israel's coastal city of Acre.

In the first reported Israeli air strike on the northern Tripoli region in the current escalation, Hamas said "Zionist bombardment" of the Beddawi refugee camp killed one of its commanders, Saeed Attallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.