JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday Zionist airstrikes had killed two successors to Hezbollah’s slain leader, as the Zionist entity expanded its offensive against the group with a fourth army division deployed into south Lebanon. Netanyahu spoke in a video released by his office hours after the deputy leader of Hezbollah, which is reeling after a spate of killings of senior commanders in Zionist airstrikes, left the door open to a negotiated ceasefire.

“We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including (Hassan) Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Netanyahu said, without naming the latter two. Earlier on Tuesday, Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to succeed Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated”. It was not immediately clear whom Netanyahu meant by the “replacement of the replacement”.

Safieddine has not been heard from publicly since another airstrike late last week, part of an escalating Zionist offensive after a year of border clashes with a major foe that has been clashing with the Zionist entity along the border in support of Palestinians fighting the Zionist entity in Gaza. “Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years,” Netanyahu added.

The heightened regional tensions kindled a year ago by Palestinian group Hamas’ attack from Gaza on the Zionist entity have escalated in recent weeks to engulf Lebanon. On Oct 1, Iran fired missiles at the Zionist entity. On Tuesday, Iran warned the Zionist entity not to follow through on threats of retaliation. Its foreign minister said any attack on Iran’s infrastructure would be avenged. Western powers are seeking a diplomatic solution, fearing the conflict could roil the wider, oil-producing Middle East.

The Zionist military said it had sent the 146th Division into south Lebanon, the first reserve division to have been deployed over the border, and was extending ground operations against Hezbollah from southeast Lebanon into its southwest. Overnight, the Zionist entity again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah is headquartered and said it had killed a figure responsible for the heavily armed group’s budgeting and logistics, Suhail Hussein Husseini – the latest in a string of assassinations of some of Hezbollah’s top officials.

In the Zionist entity’s north, not far from the Lebanon border, warning sirens sounded regularly throughout Tuesday as authorities said Hezbollah fired almost 200 rockets into the Zionist entity. Targets again included Haifa, the northern port city where there were multiple reports of damage to buildings from missile debris. The Zionist entity’s stated objective is to make its northern areas safe from Hezbollah rocket fire and allow thousands of displaced residents to return.

Safieddine, the senior Hezbollah official, was widely expected to succeed Nasrallah, the movement’s longtime leader assassinated in a Zionist airstrike on south Beirut on Sept. 27. “Hezbollah is an organization without a head. Nasrallah was eliminated, his replacement was probably also eliminated,” Gallant told officers at the Zionist military’s northern command center, in a brief video segment distributed by the military.

Safieddine has been a prime target for the Zionist entity, nurtured as an influential leader and potential heir to Nasrallah. As head of Hezbollah’s executive council, he has overseen the group’s political affairs, while also sitting on the Jihad Council that manages its military operations.

In a televised speech from an undisclosed location shown before the release of Gallant’s video, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said he backed attempts to secure a truce. For the first time, the end of war in Gaza was not mentioned as a pre-condition to halting the combat in Lebanon. Qassem said Hezbollah backed moves by Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, to secure a halt to the fighting. Qassem said Hezbollah’s capabilities were intact despite “painful blows” from the Zionist entity. “Dozens of cities are within range of the resistance’s missiles. We assure you that our capabilities are fine.”

Gaza’s civil defense agency on Tuesday said a Zionist strike killed at least 17 people at a refugee camp in the center of the territory. “The civil defense teams recovered 17 martyrs, including children, and several others who were wounded from the three-story home of the Abdul Hadi family, which was bombed by a missile from an (Zionist) warplane in Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said in a statement.

Bassal said the bodies of those killed and the wounded were taken to Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat camp and to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the city of Deir el-Balah. Bassal earlier told AFP that several air strikes rocked central and northern Gaza since the early hours of Tuesday. Witnesses and rescuers also said Zionist military operations continued in Jabaliya, where troops launched a ground assault in recent days.

Many residents of Jabaliya fled from their homes or tents as Zionist warplanes bombarded the area. Iman Abu Najm, 33, left her home as the latest Zionist attack began in Jabaliya. “The shelling was relentless, children were screaming, people were panicking in the streets, and gunfire was targeting houses and people,” she told AFP, describing the chaos that unfolded during the air strikes. She said many people were “trapped in their homes, unable to leave as intense gunfire continued”. – Agencies