Rhino: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israeli airstrikes killed two successors to Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah group, as Israel expanded its offensive against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah by deploying a fourth army division in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s remarks came in a video released by his office hours after Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, left the door open to negotiating a ceasefire.
Hezbollah has been hit by a series of assassinations of senior commanders in Israeli airstrikes.
“We have undermined Hezbollah’s capabilities. “We eliminated thousands of terrorists, including (Hassan) Nasrallah himself and his replacement, and the replacement’s replacement,” Netanyahu said, without naming the replacements.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said earlier on Tuesday that Hashem Safieddine, believed to be the potential successor to the group’s late Secretary-General Nasrallah, had apparently been “eliminated.”
Contact with Safieddine had been lost since another airstrike late last week as Israel stepped up its offensive after year-long cross-border clashes with Hezbollah, which clashes with Israel in support of the Palestinians in Gaza war.