JERUSALEM, Sept 28, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - The Israeli military announced on Saturday that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut the previous night.

"Hassan Nasrallah is dead," military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani announced on X.

Captain David Avraham, another military spokesman, also confirmed to AFP that the Hezbollah chief had been "eliminated" following strikes Friday on the Lebanese capital.

A source close to the Lebanese group meanwhile told AFP on condition of anonymity that contact with Nasrallah had been lost since Friday evening.

Contact with the group leader had been lost for two days and he had been rumoured killed during Israel's last war with Hezbollah in 2006, the source said, adding that he later re-emerged unscathed.

A military statement said the strikes also killed Ali Karake, who the statement identified as commander of Hezbollah's southern front, and an unspecified number of other Hezbollah commanders.

"During Hassan Nasrallah's 32-year reign as the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, he was responsible for the murder of many Israeli civilians and soldiers, and the planning and execution of thousands of terrorist activities," the statement said.

"He was responsible for directing and executing terrorist attacks around the world in which civilians of various nationalities were murdered. Nasrallah was the central decision-maker and the strategic leader of the organisation."

Hezbollah began firing on Israel one day after Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Israel has over the past days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people and displaced around 118,000.