Israel targeted the top Hamas terror commander in a Beirut airstrike, Arab and Israeli media reports claim Saturday.
The strike on Friday night was aimed at eliminating Muhammad Haydar, the head of Hezbollah’s overall terrorist operation. “Israel targeted the head of Hezbollah’s operations department, Muhammad Haydar, in a Friday night airstrike on Beirut,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
Haydar is the most significant Hezbollah terrorist to be targeted by Israel since terror chief Hassan Nasrallah and senior commanders were eliminated in late September. “Haydar, who is also referred to by his alias ‘Abu Ali,’ is (…) considered to be Hezbollah’s most senior remaining figure after Israel eliminated the terror organization’s leaders,” the newspaper added.
The Israeli news website YNET reported:
The IDF strike on Beirut early on Saturday targeted Muhammad Haydar, Hezbollah’s chief of operations, Sky News Arabic reported citing Israeli officials. Haydar, a former member of parliament, was a close advisor to slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated in an attack on the Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut in September.The IDF considered him chief of the terror group’s military after a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah commanders. He has been leading the organization in recent months and sources tod the Saudi Arabia Al Hadath channel that he was the strategic – security brain behind Hezbollah’s war with Israel.According to reports in Lebanon, the military used bunker busting bombs in the strike that brought down an 8-storey building and created a crater. At least 11 people were killed and more wounded but Lebanese health officials said they expected the death toll to rise because teams were struggling to pull survivors from the rubble.The strike came without warning, as was the practice of the IDF, in the pre-dawn hours, while at the same time, Hezbollah fired 5 rockets at Haifa and its surrounding areas.
With Nasrallah’s replacement, 71-year-old Islamic cleric Naim Qassem, apparently in hiding, Haydar has been trying to fill the terror chief’s shoes.”Haydar is a member of Hezbollah’s top military body, the Jihad Council,” The Times of Israel reported. “Haydar and another top Hezbollah commander, Haytham Ali Tabataba’i, have been Hezbollah’s de-facto military leaders since Israel killed the terror group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with most of the group’s top military brass in a wave of recent strikes.”
The reported airstrike to take out Hezbollah operations chief comes after Israel in mid-November killed the terror group’s propaganda chief, Mohammad Afif, in a similar strike. Afif took responsibility for the October 18 drone strikes at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home.
Besides the targeted strikes to take out the top Hezbollah commander, the IDF was destroying the terrorist infrastructure in the southern Beirut jihadist bastion of Dahieh. Israeli fighter jets carried out “additional intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah terrorist targets in the Dahieh, a key Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut,” the Israel Defense Force (IDF) said in a statement Saturday.
“The targets included several Hezbollah command centers, and additional terrorist infrastructure. Hezbollah deliberately embedded its infrastructure in these civilian areas, using the Lebanese civilian population as a human shield,” the IDF said. “Prior to the strikes, numerous steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including by collecting prior intelligence, leveraging aerial surveillance, and issuing advance warnings to the civilian population in the area.”
“The strikes were directed toward Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure and are part of the IDF’s ongoing efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel and to dismantle the weapons production and storage facilities that Hezbollah established over the years in the Dahieh area,” the military disclosed.
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