The moment Netanyahu pushed the button: Israeli PM ‘tricked’ Hezbollah by flying to the US before authorising IDF to launch apocalyptic airstrikes to ‘kill’ terror group’s leader, leaving Beirut in ruins and the Middle East on the brink of ‘all-out war’

Beirut has been left a smouldering wreck after intense IDF airstrikes pounded key Hezbollah targets, including the organisation’s headquarters where a top leader was thought to be hiding, as one official declared Israel was ‘going to war’ with Lebanon.

The intense bombing began just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech at the United Nations in New York on Friday afternoon vowing to continue the fight against the ‘terror organisation’.

HIs visit to the US was partly a move designed to ‘trick’ Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah into thinking he was safe while the Israeli premier was away, one senior Israeli official revealed.

And just three hours later, Netanyahu gave the green light to the IDF’s ‘unprecedented’ heavy bombardment of the Lebanese capital during a call to defence minister Yoav Gallant, who remained in Tel Aviv.

It has since emerged that Israel did not inform the White House of the impending strikes before they began. 

Shortly after 5pm, several missiles rained down on the Hezbollah HQ, located under residential buildings in Beirut, where Nasrallah was thought to be located.

Speculation is rife over whether Nasrallah and his top commanders were alive or mortally wounded in the ‘unprecedented’ attack.

Israel is yet to confirm Nasrallah’s status and is ‘checking’ if he was present, sources told Israeli media, in what the US Secretary of State dubbed a ‘precarious moment for the world’.

A source close to Hezbollah told Reuters Nasrallah is still alive, and Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported he was safe, but the group itself has not spoken on his fate.

However, another source said that Hezbollah’s senior leadership was unreachable following Israel’s strikes.

More than 90 people were injured and the Lebanese health ministry claims six people have died, but the number of casualties is expected to rise.

The reaction was almost immediate, as Hezbollah launched a retaliatory strike into northern Israel, prompting the country’s Iron Dome anti-missile system into action.

Meanwhile, Iran warned Israel it had ‘crossed its red lines’ and branded the attack a ‘game-changing escalation’, further stoking fears of an all-out war in the region.

Remaining unperturbed, further Israeli attacks resumed on Beirut on Friday evening close to 11.30pm, with explosions reported in parts of the city and three buildings reduced to rubble.

Footage emerging on social media showed the night sky over Beirut filled with intense orange flashes, followed by the booms of heaving bombardment, smoke clouds rising and the sounds of people screaming in the near distance.

The Lebanese capital became a blazing hellscape, as Israel continued to pound it with missiles overnight. 

Israel’s Channel 12 quoted an official as saying ominously: ‘Israel is going to war’. 

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that the earlier Israeli strikes had destroyed four buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, causing many casualties. The IDF subsequently confirmed it had attacked Hezbollah in Da’aheh, Beirut on its social media pages.

‘As of this time, there is no change in the directives of the Home Front Command. We will update any changes immediately on the official platforms of the Home Front Command,’ it said.

Iran’s embassy in Beirut described the strikes as a ‘dangerous, game-changing escalation’, calling them a ‘crime‘ that merits ‘appropriate punishment’. 

The Israeli military said it would perform ‘targeted strikes’ on weapons belonging to Hezbollah in southern Beirut after it attacked the Dahiyeh neighbourhood, levelling six buildings, with rescue efforts still underway.

In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces said the weapons were being stored beneath civilian buildings in the area.

In a televised address, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israel will not tolerate the civilian airport in Beirut being used for military purposes.

He said: ‘We will not allow arms transfers to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in any way. We know about Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah and foil them. Air force jets are now patrolling around the Beirut airport.

‘We will not allow hostile flights with weapons to land at the civilian Beirut airport.’

He said the military’s strike on Hezbollah’s central command on Friday was ‘very precise’, but forces were ‘still checking the results’ of the attack.

‘We are assessing the situation, and there is no change in the guidelines. We will update you on any changes immediately.

‘In the last few days, we revealed who Hezbollah is hiding in southern Lebanon, and now we will reveal how it is planting strategic weapons and means of warfare in the heart of Beirut’s Dahieh – so that buildings will serve as a shield.’

Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah said this evening that it had retaliated and fired a salvo of rockets on the city of Safed in Israel, its first announced attack since the strikes in Beirut hours earlier.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has convened an emergency session of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council at his home, the New York Times reported.
Reports of the attacks came minutes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a defiant speech at the UN General Assembly, vowing to continue striking Hezbollah in Lebanon until Israel achieves ‘total victory’.

Hezbollah’s media office said that there was ‘no truth to any statement’ about the Israeli attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs, without specifying what statements it was referring to.

It said the media office alone would publish in the group’s name. 

Hezbollah has not otherwise made any statement about the Israeli strikes, which Israel’s military said struck the group’s central command.

Security sources told Reuters that the attack was the the heaviest in the past year, aimed at an area where top Hezbollah officials are usually based.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said: ‘These were not the precision strikes we got used to over the recent days and weeks. This was different.

‘These were unprecedented, multiple, loud and successive explosions – really the loudest explosions that we have heard in the capital.’

Thousands of people were reportedly massed in the area for the funeral of Hezbollah members killed in prior strikes.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the command centre was embedded deep within civilian areas. 

Ten teams from Lebanon’s Red Cross were immediately dispatched to the scene. 

‘The UN is watching with great alarm,’ UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a briefing upon news of the attack. 

The strikes came shortly after Netanyahu vowed to continue the fight against Hezbollah in his UN General Assembly address, insisting: ‘My country is at war, fighting for its life.’

‘We must defend ourselves against these savage murderers. Our enemies seek not only to destroy us, they seek to destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror,’ he told delegates.

In a message he addressed to ‘the tyrants of Tehran’, he said: ‘If you strike us, we will strike you… There is no place in Iran where the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that is true for the entire Middle East.’

Netanyahu left Israel for New York to trick Hezbollah’s leader into thinking he was safe, a senior Israeli official has told the Telegraph.

His address to the UN ‘was part of a diversion’ intended to make Hezbollah’s leader believe that they would not take action while Netanyahu was physically in the US.

‘Netanyahu approved the strike before delivering his speech at the UN,’ the official said.

Israeli air force jets struck Beirut moments after Netanyahu’s UN speech ended.

Netanyahu’s speech made no mention at all of the 21-day ceasefire proposal made by the US, France and other allies on Wednesday, which seeks to cool tensions and allow space for talks, as the region appears to be on the brink of all-out war.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz previously rejected the push, vowing to keep fighting Hezbollah militants ‘until victory’. Netanyahu’s office said he had ‘not even responded’ to the proposal, and that he had ordered the military ‘to continue the fighting with full force’.

Hezbollah, for its part, has not commented on the truce proposal. 

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office told MailOnline: ‘The safety of British nationals is our number one priority and the situation in Lebanon is deeply concerning. Our travel advice is to leave Lebanon and we are doing everything we can to work with commercial airlines to maximise capacity.

‘We continue to plan for a range of scenarios whilst working with our allies to de-escalate tensions and call for an immediate ceasefire.’

The Iranian embassy in Lebanon condemned the attacks, warning of a ‘dangerous escalation’ in the Middle East.

‘This reprehensible crime… represents a dangerous escalation that changes the rules of the game,’ the Iranian embassy said in a post on X, adding that Israel ‘will receive the appropriate punishment’.

The Iranian foreign ministry condemned the ‘brutal terrorist air strike on several residential buildings in Beirut’.

‘The continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes shows clearly that the ceasefire call issued by the United States and some Western countries is a blatant trick aimed at winning time for the Zionist regime to continue its crimes against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples,’ ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned at the UN on Friday that the Middle East was at the precipice of a ‘full-blown’ war as Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli military called for an immediate evacuation of some specific buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X. 

The United States had no advance warning of an Israeli strike in Beirut and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart as it was ongoing, a Pentagon spokesperson said on Friday.

They were the US government’s first comments about an Israeli operation that defied Washington’s calls for de-escalation and a ceasefire.

‘The United States was not involved in this operation and we had no advanced warning,’ spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Singh declined to say what Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Austin about the operation and whether it targeted the Iran-backed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The Pentagon declined to speculate on whether Nasrallah was still alive.

Austin and Gallant spoke as the Pentagon chief flew over the Atlantic after a visit to London.

The Biden administration has been seeking to contain the crisis from spiralling further. Austin has publicly warned that an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah would be devastating. On Thursday, he warned that risk existed but added a diplomatic solution was still viable.

He met with Israel’s strategic affairs minister in New York, telling him the ceasefire would ‘allow civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes’.

‘Further escalation of the conflict will only make that objective more difficult,’ his spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

‘We are winning,’ Netanyahu said triumphantly on Friday, as Israel continues to bombard Lebanon as part of its campaign against Hezbollah, which he labelled a ‘quintessential terror organisation’.

Widespread airstrikes across the country’s south and capital Beirut have left hundreds dead, including civilians, children and paramedics, in just a few days.

Protesters gathered outside the UN condemning Netanyahu, who has vowed to continue with the battle against Hamas until ‘total victory’ is achieved. 

He went on to say regarding Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah: ‘We will fight until we achieve victory, total victory, there is no substitute for it.’ 

His speech was met with cheers from some allies in the audience, but also jeers, with many delegates walking out as he took to the stage. 

Netanyahu said he had not intended to come to New York to address the UN assembly this year, but felt compelled to do so ‘to set the record straight’ after what he called ‘the lies and slanders levelled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium.’

He denounced the UN, as he has repeatedly done in the past, labelling it as ‘a house of darkness’ and a ‘swamp of antisemitic bile’ and saying Israel should be treated as fairly as other nations.

He said it the body had passed more resolutions against Israel than all other nations combined over the past decade, adding that the ‘war criminals’ are in Iran, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.

The two speakers who preceded Netanyahu on Friday each made a point of calling out Israel for its actions in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed over the past year. 

‘Mr Netanyahu, stop this war now,’ Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said as he closed his remarks, pounding the podium.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, speaking just before the Israeli leader, declared of Gaza: ‘This is not just a conflict. This is systematic slaughter of innocent people of Palestine.’

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 41,500 Palestinians and wounded more than 96,000 others, according to the latest figures released on Thursday by the Health Ministry. 

In recent days, Israel has turned its attention to the border with Lebanon, where it is targeting Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel almost immediately after October 7, saying near-daily rocket fire into northern Israel over the past 11 months was to show its solidarity with Gaza.

Israel faces pressure from its allies over its conduct in Lebanon, with many thousands of civilians displaced by the strikes and hundreds killed.

Shelters set up hastily by the government on Monday quickly became overcrowded, leaving many seeking cover in cars on the side of the road.

‘We struggled a lot on the road just to get here,’ said Issa Baydoun, who fled the village of Shihine when it was bombed.

‘We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them.’ 

Israel maintains that it is targeting Hezbollah weapons and rocket launchers across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa region to the north.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has said Israel intends to keep operations ‘as short as possible’ and insisted the military makes ‘vast efforts not to hit civilians’.

‘Regarding the high number of casualties, every one is a tragedy in Lebanon,’ he said.

But fears mount that strikes could soon lead to a full ground invasion.

The Israeli government also faces immense pressure at home to ensure those displaced by the conflict in the north can return to their livelihoods.

Some 60,000 people have been evacuated from since Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza.

Major General Herzi Halevi edged the threat of ground invasion further on Wednesday, telling troops to prepare for boots on the ground.

He said the punishing airstrikes this week were designed to ‘prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.’

The Israeli military has said in recent days it had no immediate plans for a ground invasion, but Halevi’s comments were the strongest yet suggesting troops could move in. 

Israel said Wednesday it would activate two reserve brigades for missions in the north – another sign that Israel plans tougher action.

‘This will enable the continuation of combat against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation,’ it said in a statement.

 

Israel has reported several successful missions targeting Hezbollah’s senior command in recent days as it stretches its operations in Lebanon.

The IDF shared footage this week purporting to show the Israeli Air Force (IAF) striking Muhammed Hussein Srour in a building in Beirut on Thursday.

Srour – the leader of Hezbollah’s Aerial Command – had been behind ‘numerous aerial terror attacks… aimed at the people of Israel’ over the years, according to the IDF.

Military officials said Ibrahim Kobeisi, directing the group’s missile and rocket unit, was killed during its bombardment of Beirut on Tuesday.

‘Other key commanders’ were said to be with Kobeisi at the time, but it was not clear whether any were killed or wounded. 

Israel’s said on Monday it had targeted senior Hezbollah leader Ali Karaki in another airstrike on Beirut – but Hezbollah later claimed he had survived and been moved.

Ibrahim Aqil, the head of Hezbollah’s military operations and acting commander of the Radwan Force, was among 16 commanders killed when devices exploded across Lebanon last week.

Almost 800 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon over the last week, according to Lebanese figures.

Ongoing fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border.

Israel is vowing to step up its attacks on Hezbollah until its citizens can return safely to their homes.

The joint ceasefire statement made on Wednesday said the situation in Lebanon has become ‘intolerable’ and ‘is in nobody’s interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon’. 

Israel denied responsibility for the attack.