Beirut [Lebanon], September 30: Hezbollah forces in Lebanon have found the body of leader Hassan Nasrallah, sources say, as Israel increases the scope of its strikes.
AFP news agency on September 30 quoted a source saying that the body of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was found after being killed in an Israeli airstrike in an area south of Beirut.
"His body was found on September 28 and was placed in a shroud on September 29 after being washed. Funeral and burial arrangements have not yet been made," the source added.
Before his death on September 27 in an Israeli warplane attack on Hezbollah's headquarters south of the Lebanese capital, Nasrallah was considered the most powerful figure in Lebanon.
For more than three decades, he led the Iran-backed movement, which is Israel's sworn enemy. The Israeli airstrike also killed Hezbollah leader Ali Karake, Hezbollah said on September 29, but it has not yet announced the other fatalities.
However, the Israeli military said the raid killed more than 20 Hezbollah figures at various levels. Lebanese officials said six people were killed, but the toll could be higher given the scale of the destruction.
Beirut's southern suburbs and southern and eastern Lebanon have been hit by heavy Israeli bombing in recent days. The Lebanese Health Ministry says more than 1,000 people have been killed and 6,000 injured in the past two weeks, but it is not clear how many of those were civilians. The violence has also displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
On September 30, according to Reuters, an apartment building in Beirut was hit by an Israeli airstrike, the first attack on the center of the Lebanese capital amid Israel's increased countermeasures against Iran's allies in the region.
The attack occurred on the upper floor of an apartment building in the Kola district, killing at least two people. The Israeli military did not immediately comment, but said it had struck Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley, an area about 30 km east of Beirut, according to The Guardian .
On September 29, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Israel should not attack each side in the axis of resistance one by one.
An alliance known as the axis of resistance has been built over decades with Iran's support, including Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and various Shiite Muslim armed groups in Iraq and Syria. Israel said it bombed Houthi targets in Yemen on September 29.
President Pezeshkian said that " Lebanese fighters should not be left alone to deal with this war, in order to prevent the Zionist regime (Israel) from attacking the countries in the axis of resistance from one side to another".
A deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in the attack that killed the Hezbollah leader in Beirut.
"We cannot accept such actions and they will not be left without answers. A strong response is necessary," Mr Pezeshkian said.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper