Reuters: Senior Hezbollah official escapes Israeli assassination attempt
Reuters news agency on October 11 quoted three security sources as saying that a senior Hezbollah official escaped an assassination attempt by Israel on October 10 in Beirut.
Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes in Beirut have killed 22 people and the United Nations says its peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon is increasingly in danger.
Specifically, according to security sources, Wafiq Safa, head of Hezbollah's liaison and coordination unit, responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, was attacked by Israel on the night of October 10 but luckily escaped.
Earlier in the day, a Lebanese security source told Reuters that Israeli air strikes in central Beirut targeted at least one senior official of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
The Israeli airstrikes hit a densely populated residential area of apartment buildings and small shops in central Beirut. Israel had never previously attacked the area, which is far from the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah’s headquarters have been repeatedly bombed by Israel.
Israel did not issue an evacuation warning before the airstrikes on October 10, the deadliest attack in central Beirut since the start of the fighting.
The death toll quickly mounted, and by midnight, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported 22 dead and 117 wounded. Among the dead was a family of eight, including three children, who had fled from the south, according to a security source.
Witnesses said at least one attack occurred near a gas station and a thick plume of smoke could be seen. A large fire broke out behind it as rescue workers searched for survivors in the rubble, according to video broadcast on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV.
Israel did not immediately comment on the incident.
After Israel killed a series of senior Hezbollah officials in recent weeks, including leader Hassan Nasrallah, Safa is one of the few senior figures left alive as the group's leadership struggles to reorganize.
The attempt to assassinate Safa, whose role combined security and politics, marked Israel's broadening of its targeting among Hezbollah officials, having previously focused on the group's top military and leadership commanders.
Mr. Safa, who according to Middle Eastern media sources was born in 1960, oversaw the negotiations that led to the 2008 deal in which Hezbollah exchanged the bodies of Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 for Lebanese prisoners in Israel. The 2006 incident sparked a 34-day war with Israel.
Reuters also reported that in 2021, Safa warned the judge investigating the catastrophic 2020 Beirut port explosion, who sought to question several Hezbollah-allied politicians, that Hezbollah would remove him from the investigation.
The Israeli military issued a new evacuation warning for Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, including specific buildings. Earlier in the day, Israel warned Lebanese not to return to their homes in the south to avoid casualties from the fighting.
