Israel: We Killed Another Top Hezbollah Figure

The Israeli military said Sunday it killed Nabil Kaouk, another high-ranking Hezbollah official, a day after the Lebanese militant group confirmed the death of longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. The strikes are part of a continuing Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

• The military said Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah's Central Council, was killed on Saturday, per the AP. Hezbollah has yet to confirm.
• Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah going back to the 1980s and served as Hezbollah's military commander in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel. He often appeared in local media, where he would comment on politics and security developments, and he gave eulogies at the funerals of senior militants. The United States had announced sanctions against him in 2020.

• If confirmed, he would be the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week, including founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades.
• Hezbollah, meanwhile, confirmed that one of the seven, Ali Karaki, died in Friday's strike that killed Nasrallah. The Israeli military had earlier said that Karaki was killed in the airstrike, which targeted an underground compound in Beirut where Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah figures were meeting.
• Hezbollah has also been targeted by a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel. A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon has killed at least 1,030 people—including 156 women and 87 children—in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.
• Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon by the lastest strikes. The government estimates that around 250,000 are in shelters, with three to four times as many staying with friends or relatives or camping out on the streets.

(More Hezbollah stories.)