Israel widens attacks on Iran-backed militant groups

Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address from an unknown location, on September 30.

Hezbollah’s highest-ranking official is giving a televised statement, the first public address by a figure from the group since the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Naim Qassim, who was a candidate to lead Hezbollah before Nasrallah’s appointment, is known for his religious knowledge and scholastic prowess. Born in 1953 in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, Qassem is a well-known member of the old guard. The 71-year-old Shiite cleric helped found Hezbollah in 1982, and has served seven consecutive terms as deputy secretary-general since 1991. He also oversees the group’s parliamentary activities.

He was the group’s second-in-command before Nasrallah was assassinated, often appearing in media interviews. In 2015, he wrote the book “Hezbollah: The Story from Within,” which laid out the group’s political ideology.

Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed Friday in an Israeli airstrike on his underground headquarters in Beirut — a significant escalation in the war.

A series of loud explosions rang out and smoke rose from the city’s southern suburbs. Images broadcast on local TV showed a huge crater where six buildings had been, as rescuers navigated the rubble. The strikes crushed residential buildings that sunk beneath the ground, leaving a crater bigger than the size of a soccer field.

Footage of the level of damage indicated that Israel had used 2,000-pound bombs, a weapons expert told CNN.

People gather at the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's southern suburbs on Sunday.

People gather at the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, on Sunday.

People gather at the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, on Sunday.

A woman reads the Quran at the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, on Sunday.

People gather at the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, on Sunday.

A Syrian refugee family that fled the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, take sanctuary in a public garden at the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on September 25.

Syrian refugees who once came to Lebanon fleeing violence are returning home to the unknown.

Roughly 100,000 people — both Lebanese and Syrian nationals — have crossed into Syria to flee Israeli airstrikes, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.

Israel’s intensified bombardment has displaced one million people in Lebanon, the country’s caretaker prime minister said.

About 1.5 million Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, according to the UNHCR.

“It’s a total tragic situation,” Amin told CNN’s Michael Holmes.

Israel’s targets in Lebonon are constantly changing, making it hard for civilians to find safe spaces to shelter. Residents have been told to avoid areas where Hezbollah operates, but because the group operates in secret, they don’t know where to go.

A lack of shelters means many civilians have resorted to sleeping in the open air, Amin said.

Lebanese authorities say more than 1,000 people have been killed.

Amin said UNHCR staff on the Syrian-Lebanese border are seeing thousands of people crossing into Syria every day.

This post has been updated with more information.

Displaced from Dahiyeh, southern Beirut suburb, Asmaa Kenji, mother of three, helps her son put on his shoes, as they live on the streets of central Beirut after fleeing Israeli air strikes, on September 29.

One million people in Lebanon have “moved from place to place in just a few days,” the country’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Monday as Israeli strikes in the country continue.

Mikati said the situation poses issues related to managing food and shelter for those displaced as well as public health and waste management.

Killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was a step toward changing “the balance of power in the region for years to come,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Saturday.

Israel’s leader sees an opportunity opening up for a fundamental reconfiguration of power in Middle East and he may assume that Hezbollah are mortally wounded. Total victory, however, is elusive, and those who get what they wish for often live to regret it.

Since September 17, Israel has dealt the Iran-backed militant group one body blow after another in Lebanon. By Friday evening – when Nasrallah was killed in a bombing that flattened multiple buildings – Hezballah’s senior leadership had been almost totally eliminated.

Yet recent history offers only bitter lessons for Israeli leaders — and others — who entertain grand ambitions for tectonic changes in Lebanon, and in the Middle East in general.

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the goal of crushing the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Beyond that, it hoped to establish a malleable Christian-dominated government in Beirut and to drive Syrian forces out of the country.

It failed at all three. Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1982 Israeli invasion was the birth of Hezbollah, which went on to wage a relentless guerrilla war that compelled Israel to unilaterally withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah went on to fight Israel to a standstill in the 2006 war, and in the following years grew only stronger, with significant Iranian help.

Today Hezbollah is crippled and in disarray, and clearly infiltrated by Israeli intelligence – but still, it would be premature to write its epitaph.

Read the full analysis.

A banner bearing a picture of slain Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hangs in central Tehran, two days after his targeted assassination by Israeli forces in Beirut's southern suburbs, on September 29.

Hezbollah’s continued losses in its war with Israel have created a disastrous situation for Tehran, according to Michael Eisenstadt, director of The Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program.

“It played a major role both in their struggle against Israel and their efforts to create what they call ‘the axis of resistance’ in the region,” he said, referring to the alliance of Islamist militias across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen who give Iran strategic depth against its enemies.

How – or if – Tehran will respond remains unclear.

While this will be a difficult situation for Iran to step back from, it has in the past been known to abandon its allies to their fate, Eisenstadt said.

Iran has also been put in a vulnerable place with one of its main proxies significantly weakened, he said.

Hamas on Monday announced that its leader in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif, also known as Abu Al-Amin, was killed alongside multiple members of his family in an Israeli strike on the south of the country.

The group said his wife, son and daughter were also killed in the same strike, which it said took place in the El Buss refugee camp, on the outskirts of the city of Tyre.

It was not immediately clear how senior Sharif was within Hamas. CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.

The Israeli air force has launched strikes in Lebanon overnight, particularly in the Bekaa valley and southern Lebanon, both Hezbollah strongholds.

The military says it struck locations “including dozens of launchers and buildings in which Hezbollah weapons were stored” in the Bekaa valley.

Lebanon’s national news agency said overnight Israeli strikes targeted areas in the city of Baalbe and villages of Nabi Chit, Alhamoudiyeh, Nabha, the city of Hermel and its surroundings, in the Bekaa valley.

The Israeli military also said it has struck “infrastructure sites used by Hezbollah” in southern Lebanon.

The Biden administration is worried that an attack from Iran is being planned in the wake of Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and is working with Israel on defenses, a US official said Sunday night.

Joint defenses are being prepared to ward off an attack with changes in US military posture, the official added.

The Biden administration spearheaded a multi-national defense of Israel in mid-April when Iran launched over 300 drones and missiles at Israel in response to the Israeli bombing of senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers in Syria.

The US official declined to say what kind of attack is expected from Iran or specify the moves the US military is making.

Fears of a broader regional war in the Middle East have spiked in recent weeks as Israel intensifies its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iran-backed group vows to continue its fight, even as a growing number of its top commander have been killed.

Nasrallah was killed in a massive Israeli bombing in southern Beirut on Friday. He led the most powerful of Iran’s Middle East proxies for decades and his death is a potentially crippling setback for Hezbollah as well as a major blow to Iran’s control in the region.

Read the full story.

Airstrikes hit Beirut early Monday — the first time strikes have landed within the city limits since October 7 — following a weekend of fighting on multiple fronts in the Middle East.

Israel expanded its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, stoking fears of a regional war, as Hezbollah pledged to continue fighting even as it faces growing losses in its senior ranks.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Israeli strikes killed over 100 people and wounded over 350 others in Lebanon on Sunday. The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah, including in attacks by fighter jets on about 45 targets near a village in southern Lebanon.

• Hezbollah’s leadership is shrinking, with at least three senior commanders confirmed killed Sunday, including Nabil Qaouk, a key commander and member of Hezbollah’s central council. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed Friday in a strike on the group’s underground headquarters, where 20 Hezbollah members were also present, including the head of Nasrallah’s security unit.

• Israel’s military also struck what it said were power plants and a seaport used by the Houthis in Yemen, killing at least four people and wounding dozens more. The Houthis, like Hamas and Hezbollah, are among the Iran-backed militant groups battling Israel since the war in Gaza began.

• Aid warnings: An escalation of the conflict in Lebanon would have “extremely dire consequences” for the already deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country, the aid agency Relief International said on Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced onto the streets as Israeli strikes destroy homes and infrastructure.

• US President Joe Biden said he is “working like hell” with allies to prevent an all-out war in the Middle East. Before Nasrallah’s killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed off a ceasefire proposal brokered by the US.

An apartment blocks stands in partial ruins after being hit by an Israeli airstrike on September 30, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Airstrikes hit Beirut in the early hours of Monday morning, the first time strikes have landed within the city limits of the Lebanese capital in the current war.

Videos geolocated by CNN show chaotic scenes on the streets of Beirut following the strike. The footage shows the strikes hit near Cola — a major intersection in the city.

Some context: Until now Israel’s airstrikes on the Beirut have focused on the southern part of the city, the densely populated and predominantly Shia neighborhoods where Hezbollah have a stronghold.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Lebanon has said three of its members have been killed in the airstrike.

The armed group said those killed were Mohammed Abed Al-Al, a member of its political bureau and head of the military-security department, Imad Odeh, a member of its military department and military command in Lebanon, and Abdul Rahman Abed Al-Al.

The Israeli military told CNN they are looking into the incident.

Deadly fighting between Israel and Iran-backed militant groups has ramped up in recent weeks as the Israeli military expands its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

Along with Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, Hezbollah and the Houthis are part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” an alliance of Islamist militias spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. The proxies give Iran strategic depth against its enemies.

In support of Hamas and Palestinians, Hezbollah and the Houthis have launched regular attacks on Israel over the past year. They have vowed to keep fighting until the war in Gaza ends.

Here’s what to know about the groups:

Hezbollah: The Lebanese group is believed to be the most heavily armed non-state group in the world. The Shiite group emerged out of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 22 years before it was driven out by Hezbollah. In 2006, Hezbollah and Israel fought a war for 34 days, which ended with no clear victor.

The Houthis: The Shiite group, bolstered by Iranian weapons and technology, has been fighting Saudi-backed forces for more than a decade in Yemen’s civil war. While the Houthis do not pose as much of a threat to Israel as Hamas and Hezbollah, they have wreaked havoc over the past year in the Red Sea, where they have launched strikes at commercial ships they deemed linked to Israel and its allies, threatening to choke global trade.

Hamas: The group emerged in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist group from Egypt. Hamas considers Israel an occupying power and its goal is to liberate the Palestinian territories. Hamas receives funding, weapons and training from Iran.

The US has designated Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

US President Joe Biden says he’ll speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon as tensions in the Middle East increase following Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

“Yes, I will be talking to him,” Biden said Sunday as he headed for the White House from Dover Air Force Base.

He added “we really have to avoid” all-out war in the Middle East, saying, “We’ve already taken precautions relative to our embassies and personnel who want to leave, but we’re not there yet. But we’re working like hell with the French and many others.”

Some background: Before Nasrallah’s killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed off a ceasefire proposal brokered by the United States and France that called for a 21-day pause in fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border, infuriating American officials who had been led to believe he was on board.

Israel informed the US it was launching its major operation in Beirut only after it was underway — again, to the frustration of some American officials.

Already at odds with Netanyahu over the nearly yearlong war in Gaza, Biden is now working to calm two fronts at a moment when his influence on Netanyahu’s decision-making appears to be at an all-time low.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak and MJ Lee contributed reporting to this post.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to bring former rival Gideon Sa’ar into his government is intended to shore up his domestic power base, analysts say.

Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who worked closely with Netanyahu, told CNN that the move was intended to have three effects:

Netanyahu announced Sunday that Sa’ar would join the government as a minister without portfolio.

Sa’ar said Sunday that “there is no point in continuing to sit in the opposition, in a situation where the positions of most of its members on the subject of the war are different and even far from my position. This is a time when it is my duty to try and contribute at the decision-making table.”