Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday that Hashem Safieddine, the likely successor to its leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The group did not specify the timing or location of his death but made the announcement a day after Israel claimed Safieddine and other Hezbollah leaders were killed in a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs three weeks earlier. Hezbollah described the strike as a “criminal and aggressive Zionist raid” that also killed other fighters.
Hashem Safieddine, a deeply religious cleric with family ties to Hassan Nasrallah, was widely seen as the leading candidate to succeed him after Nasrallah’s assassination on September 27 in a major Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
A member of Hezbollah’s governing Shura Council, Safieddine had close ties to Iran, having studied in the holy city of Qom. In 2017, both the United States and Saudi Arabia added him to their lists of designated “terrorists.”
