Killed Hezbollah chief’s rumoured successor ‘unreachable’ amid intense Beirut airstrikes - Israel-Iran latest

The Israeli military is claiming to have killed two senior Hamas figures during airstrikes in Gaza.

You can read their statement below.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has urged Canadian citizens still in Lebanon to sign up to be evacuated on special flights which have already helped more than 1,000 leave as security there deteriorates.

Canada has 6,000 signed up to leave and officials are trying to reach another 2,500 over the weekend, an official in Trudeau’s office said, adding that more flights were being added for Monday and Tuesday.

“We’ve still got seats on airplanes organised by Canada. We encourage all Canadians to take seats on these airplanes and get out of Lebanon while they can,” Trudeau said at a summit of leaders from French-speaking countries in France.

Canada has not been able to fill flights with its citizens and has offered seats to people from the Australia, New Zealand, the United States and some European countries, the official in his office said.

Israel has expanded its strikes on Lebanon in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Lebanon‘s Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

Fighting had been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Hamas.

Trudeau said an immediate ceasefire from both Hezbollah and Israel was needed so the situation could be stabilised and United Nations resolutions could begin to be respected again.

A senior leader of Hezbollah is “unreachable” after Israeli strikes on Beirut, a Lebanese security source has told Reuters, suggesting that Israel may have killed another key figure from the Iran-backed group.

The source claimed that since strikes on the suburb of Dahieh in Beirut on Friday, senior leader Hashem Safieddine could not be reached.

Subsequent strikes have prevented rescuers from concluding whether Safieddine has been killed, separate sources added.

When asked in a Friday evening briefing about whether Safieddine was killed in the strike, Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said that the military was still investigating the outcome of the raid.

“Around midnight, we struck the Central Intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah in Dahieh,” he said. “When we have more information to share about who was there and what the result of the strike was, we will share it.”

He claimed that since beginning the ground invasion into southern Lebanon the Israeli military had killed  250 Hezbollah operatives, including four battalion commanders and nine company commanders.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed by an Israeli strike last week in Beirut.

Iranian oil minister Mohsen Paknejad has said he is “not worried about crisis” amid reports that Israel could target the country’s oil facilities by way of retaliation to Tehran’s aerial attack on Israel on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, US president Joe Biden sought to dissuade Israel from attacking Iran’s oil fields for fear of it’s impact on global oil prices.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” he said.

An Israeli strike on a refugee camp in north Lebanon has killed Hamas official Saeed Atallah Ali and his family, the militant group has said.

The early morning strike came a day after another Israeli air strike cut off a main highway linking Lebanon with Syria, leaving two huge craters on either side of the road.

Israel began a ground incursion into Lebanon on Tuesday against the Hezbollah militant group. The Israeli military said nine soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon.