BEIRUT\/JERUSALEM
\nA high-level Hezbollah source said on Saturday that contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely touted as potentially the group\u2019s next leader, had been lost following Israeli strikes this week.
\nThe group said in a statement that there were \u201cno Hezbollah sources and our viewpoint is issued in official statements\u201d. It did not confirm or deny whether contact with Safieddine was lost.
\n\u201cContact with Sayyed Safieddine has been lost since the violent strikes on Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs\u201d early on Friday, the official told AFP. \u201cWe don\u2019t know if he was at the targeted site, or who may have been there with him,\u201d he added.
\nA second source close to Hezbollah also confirmed that communication had been cut off with Safieddine and that his whereabouts were unknown.
\nHezbollah \u201cis trying to reach the underground headquarters that were targeted, but every single time Israel starts striking again to impede rescue efforts,\u201d he said.
\nSafieddine \u201cwas with Hezbollah\u2019s head of intelligence,\u201d known as Hajj Murtada, when the strikes took place, he said.
\nBoth sources requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
\nEarly on Friday, a source close to Hezbollah said Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group\u2019s south Beirut stronghold, in one of the most powerful raids since Israel intensified its campaign of bombardment last week.
\nAFP footage showed giant balls of flame and thick smoke rising from the site that was attacked. Israel\u2019s military said it had hit \u201ctargets belonging to Hezbollah\u2019s intelligence headquarters in Beirut\u201d.
\nThe attack came a week after the Israeli military said it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in air strikes on the group\u2019s headquarters in south Beirut.
\nIsrael was preparing a military response to Iran\u2019s 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.
\nThe Israeli military official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the issue publicly, said the army \u201cis preparing a response to the unprecedented and unlawful Iranian attack\u201d.
\nHe 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.
\nSina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, told AFP that both Israel and Iran were \u201ctaking huge gambles\u201d.
\n\u201cEverything right now hinges on Israel\u2019s response,\u201d he said.
\nHezbollah said Saturday its fighters were confronting Israeli troops in Lebanon\u2019s southern border region, where the Israeli military said it struck militants inside a mosque in Bint Jbeil, a focus of this week\u2019s fighting.
\nThe Israeli military said its forces were engaged in \u201climited, localised\u201d raids in southern Lebanon, though the scale of their operations was not immediately clear.
\nThe army reported frequent rocket fire from Lebanon, some of which was intercepted by air defences, as Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel\u2019s Ramat David air base, about 45 kilometres (30 miles) from the frontier.
\nThe Lebanese group also said it fired rockets at a \u201cmilitary industries company\u201d near Israel\u2019s coastal city of Acre.
\nIn the first reported Israeli air strike on the northern Tripoli region in the current escalation, Hamas said \u201cZionist bombardment\u201d of the Beddawi refugee camp killed one of its commanders, Saeed Attallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT\/JERUSALEM A high-level Hezbollah source said on Saturday that contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely touted as potentially the group\u2019s next leader, had been lost following Israeli strikes this week. The group said in a statement that there were \u201cno Hezbollah sources and our viewpoint is issued in official statements\u201d. It did not confirm or deny …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71193,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71181\/revisions\/71193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}