The body of the leader of the Shiite group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has been found. He was killed in an Israeli strike. Reuters reports this, citing sources.
There are no wounds on the body, and it is assumed that he died from trauma sustained due to the impact of a blast wave, the agency’s sources said.
The Israeli army (IDF) reported the removal of Nasrallah the day before, September 28. The Hezbollah leader was killed in an airstrike on the group’s underground central headquarters in Beirut on the evening of September 27. Ynet and Al Jazeera reported that the plane dropped 80-85 bombs, each weighing 1 ton, including bunker busters. The IDF noted that before the strikes, residents of three houses were contacted with an appeal to evacuate, since these buildings were located directly above strategic Hezbollah facilities. The Israeli army said that Nasrallah was building a “massive arsenal of weapons” with the sole purpose of “starting a war with Israel,” and that the goal was to remove him.
After the death of its leader, the group assured that it would “continue jihad in the face of the enemy in support of the Gaza Strip and Palestine, and in defense of Lebanon and its steadfast and dignified people.”
Nasrallah, 64, had been the leader of Hezbollah since 1992. He took over the group after the death of its former leader, Abbas al-Musawi, in a missile strike by Israeli army helicopters on a convoy.
Exceptional measures were taken to make sure Nasrallah’s safety, The New York Times wrote. When he gave a rare interview to this publication in 2002, the journalist was blindfolded and driven around the southern suburbs of Beirut for some time. Then the group’s leader’s guards checked absolutely every item that was supposed to go into Nasrallah’s room. In particular, they took apart the pens to make sure that they only contained ink.
