Hezbollah ‘battered and broken’ by heavy Israeli attacks

Israel’s defence minister has said Hezbollah has been left “battered and broken” after a bombing campaign that killed most of the group’s military leadership including Hassan Nasrallah, its chief since 1992.
During a military briefing, Yoav Gallant said Hezbollah has lost “significant command and fire capabilities” and had a “disintegrated leadership following the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah”.
He also said that Hashem Safieddine, the Hezbollah official widely expected to replace Nasrallah, had likely been eliminated.
Contact with Safieddine has been lost since an Israeli air strike on Beirut on Friday, Lebanese security sources said on Saturday.
It comes as UN officials warned on Tuesday of Lebanon entering the same “spiral of doom” as Gaza, which has been under heavy bombardment and Israeli ground assault since last year.
Today’s live coverage has ended. Here’s a roundup of the day’s events: 
Rich Williams asks: “If Russia has been giving Iran nuclear know-how in exchange for missiles, is Tehran closer to getting a bomb than it ever has been?”
“The United States and Britain have said Russia is giving Iran nuclear and space technology in exchange for ballistic missiles to be used in the war in Ukraine, but they have not shared any details of what exactly that technology is. 
“Russia has long had a civil nuclear energy relationship with Iran. At this point, there is no evidence Russia has given Iran a bomb, and to do so would go against decades of Russian and Soviet policy, which is to never share nuclear weapons, even with allies. 
“That said, Iran is believed to have produced enough 60 per cent enriched Uranium to make two bombs if it is enriched one stage further, to the weapons-grade 90 per cent. How quickly they could make a usable warhead is unknown, but some people put it at weeks or months. 
“Many Israeli politicians argue Iran’s nuclear facilities should be bombed before the opportunity is missed. 
“Some of its Western allies fear a bombing raid would not destroy the program and might just convince Iran that it needed to build a weapon quickly.“
The Israel Defence Forces’ 98th Division has said it has killed over 200 Hezbollah fighters during a week of operations in southern Lebanon. 
The Division also located weapons caches and demolished several Hezbollah positions above and below ground using more than 100 tons of explosives, according to Israeli reports. 
Hezbollah is a far more organised fighting force than Hamas, the unit said, having previously battled the Palestinian terror group in Gaza. 
The 98th Division was the first Israeli formation to enter Lebanon on October 1, when Israel began its incursion. 
Timothy Camacho asks: “Israel has the nuclear option if it suffers too many losses. It has never officially recognised this potential: Is there a reason it is never openly discussed? Is it only reserved for back channels?”
“Israel maintains a deliberate policy of ambiguity over its nuclear weapons, neither denying nor confirming their existence.
“There are a number of reasons for this, including not giving neighbouring governments an excuse to build their own deterrent, and not making it difficult for the United States to continue to provide Israel with aid. 
“Interestingly the United States also maintains a policy of not talking about Israel’s nukes. That probably does stymy open conversation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t discussed. 
“Earlier this year the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Centre, a US think-tank, war-gamed an Israeli-Iranian nuclear exchange.”
The White House is growing increasingly distrustful of the Israeli government and may not automatically come to its aid in the event of another Iranian missile attack on the country, US news website Axios has reported. 
According to Axios, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, that the US expects “clarity and transparency” from Israel about its plans to retaliate against Iran because it will affect US forces and interests in the region.
Distrust has been mounting, Axios said, after the US was allegedly kept in the dark about several recent Israeli operations, including the detonation of pagers used by Hezbollah members and the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader of more than 30 years. 
“Our trust of the Israelis is very low right now and for a good reason,” one US official was quoted as saying. 
US officials however admitted that US would very likely help Israel defend itself regardless, Axios said. 
Hamas veteran Khaled Meshaal has said the terror group would rise “like a phoenix” from the ashes despite heavy losses during a year of war with Israel. 
“Palestinian history is made of cycles,” Meshaal, 68, said. 
“We go through phases where we lose martyrs (victims) and we lose part of our military capabilities, but then the Palestinian spirit rises again, like the phoenix, thanks to God.”
Meshaal was Hamas’ overall leader from 1996 to 2017 and currently lives in Qatar while remaining an influential figure within the terror group. He survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997 when he was injected with poison. 
At least 17 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday, the territory’s civil defence agency said. 
“The civil defence teams recovered 17 martyrs, including children, and several others who were wounded from the three-story home of the Abdul Hadi family, which was bombed by a missile from an [Israeli] warplane in Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said in a statement.
Bassal added that the bodies of those killed and the wounded were taken to Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat camp and to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the city of Deir el-Balah.
Luke Bailey-Harris asks: “In the likelihood that a war does break out with Israel and Iran, should the public in the West be worried that a wider war, maybe even with Western and Russian influence or involvement, could break out?”
“The fear among Israel’s Western allies is that Benjamin Netanyahu orders a large-scale air attack on Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities, which in turn prompts a massive Iranian response  – much bigger than the easily intercepted October 1 attack – that would leave the United States and others will little choice but to intervene on the side of their ally. At that point, you could be talking about fighting all over the Middle East.
“Russia is an Iranian ally, so the crisis is already tangentially linked to the war in Ukraine.”
Israel is sending troops into southwest Lebanon, its military said on Tuesday, marking an expansion of the ground invasion launched last week.
A fourth Israeli army division was deployed overnight to conduct ground operations against Hezbollah in the area, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said, meaning the total number of Israeli troops in Lebanon now is likely over 15,000.
In a statement, the IDF said the Carmeli Reserve Infantry Brigade and the Iron Fist Reserve Armored Brigade of the 146th Division launched the mission, adding that they were supported by the 213th Artillery Regiment.
The thousands of troops now entering Lebanon’s southwest will be accompanied by Israel’s navy when they launch raids against Hezbollah strongholds, according to an IDF spokesman.
The 146th Division joins three other divisions already operating in Lebanon: the 98th, the 36th, and the 91st.
The 91st Division was sent into southern Lebanon on Sunday night, where the IDF said it conducted a “targeted and contained” operation alongside troops from the 3rd “Alexandroni” Brigade, the 8th Armored Brigade and the Northern Nahal Brigade.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has published images and videos of what it says is a Hezbollah fighting position captured by troops of its Golani Brigade. 
The position was located in an olive grove and an adjacent home, the IDF said. 
Soldiers found a cache of weapons, ammunition, tunnel infrastructure and resting areas, it added. 
Troops of the Golani Brigade captured a Hezbollah fighting position in southern Lebanon, located in an olive grove and an adjacent home, the IDF says.The military says the troops found a primed mortar launcher aimed at Israel, ammunition, tunnel infrastructure, and resting… pic.twitter.com/8hYZTyf3jg
The Israel Defence Forces said it carried out strikes against Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs a short while ago, without providing further details. 
Lebanese media has reported an Israeli strike on Haret Hreik, a neighbourhood in Dahieh, Beirut’s Hezbollah-dominated southern suburb. 
The strike reportedly took place shortly after Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, gave a televised speech. 
Hezbollah’s deputy leader has said the group’s capabilities remain intact despite “painful blows” from Israel. 
In a televised address, Naim Qassem emphasised that Hezbollah’s leadership was still in order after an Israeli bombing campaign that eliminated most of the group’s military chain of command and Hassan Nasrallah, its leader of more than 30 years. 
“The party’s leadership and the resistance (Hezbollah) are meticulously organised… We have overcome painful blows,” Qassem said. 
Qassem went on to say that he supported the efforts of Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri — a Hezbollah ally — in securing a ceasefire with Israel, but did not provide details of any conditions that Hezbollah would demand. 
The Israeli military said it has killed 20 Hamas terrorists over the past day in a new operation in the northern Gazan city of Jabalia. 
The militants were killed in airstrikes and as a result of close-quarters combat, the military said. 
Troops of the Israeli military’s 162nd Division also located and destroyed a weapons depot amid the fighting, it added. 
The Israeli military said it killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, the commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters, in a strike on Beirut on Monday.
“Yesterday, under the precise direction of the intelligence wing, air force fighter jets targeted the Beirut area and eliminated Suhail Hussein Husseini, the head of the headquarters of the terrorist organisation Hezbollah,” the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said.
The IDF said Husseini helped to smuggle weapons from Iran to various units within Hezbollah and accused him of co-ordinating terror attacks against Israel.
It added that he was “responsible for the budgeting and logistical management of Hezbollah’s most sensitive projects, including the organization’s war plans and other special operations, such as coordinating terrorist attacks against the State of Israel from Lebanon and Syria”.
He was also a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, the terror group’s top military body.
The IDF said the headquarters hit in the strike was also home to Hezbollah’s research and development unit, responsible for manufacturing the group’s precision-guided missiles. 
A fourth Israeli army division joined Israel’s ground incursion into southern Lebanon overnight, its military said. 
The 146th Reserve Division began ground operations last night in the western sector of southern Lebanon, joining three other divisions — the 98th, 36th, and 91st — that are already operating across the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel is thought likely to have now deployed over 15,000 troops to southern Lebanon. 
The Israeli military has announced the death of a soldier killed fighting in the Gaza Strip. 
He was named as Staff Sgt Noam Israel Abdu, 20, from Kadima-Zoran, of the Bislamach Brigade’s 17th Battalion. 
Another soldier was seriously wounded in the same incident in which Abdu was killed, the military said. 
The death takes the number of Israeli soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip since October last year to 350. 
Separately, a reservist from the Alexandroni Brigade’s 7012th Battalion was seriously injured fighting in southern Lebanon, the military said. 
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