Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah , who transformed the Lebanese militant group into a potent paramilitary and political force in the Middle East, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, the group said. He was 64.
Nasrallah, who spearheaded Hezbollah's war against Israel in 2006 and got the group heavily involved in neighboring Syria's brutal conflict, was killed in a massive Israeli airstrike on the Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik Friday evening that knocked down several multistory apartment buildings.
"His eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, had joined his fellow great martyrs whom he had led for 30 years from one victory to another," Hezbollah said in a statement. It added that Nasrallah "fell as a martyr on the road to Jerusalem."
Fears of a regional war
Nasrallah's death comes amid a dizzying escalation in the nearly yearlong conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, since the war in Gaza started, and more than three decades after he took leadership of the Iranian-backed militant group following the killing of his predecessor by an Israeli missile in 1992. Five years later, the United States designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
