Beirut: Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday that Israel killed Hashem Safieddine, the apparent successor of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a strike, without saying when or where it happened.
The announcement came a day after Israel said he was killed along with other Hezbollah leaders in an air strike in Beirut's southern suburbs three weeks ago.
"We mourn... the head of the Executive Council of Hezbollah, his eminence the scholar Sayyed Hashem Safieddine," the Iran-backed group said in a statement, adding he was killed by "a criminal and aggressive Zionist raid" alongside other Hezbollah fighters.
The deeply religious Safieddine, a cleric with family ties to Nasrallah, had been widely viewed as the most likely candidate for the party's top job after the assassination of Nasrallah on September 27 in a huge Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs.
Safieddine, a member of the group's governing Shura Council, had strong ties to Iran after undergoing religious studies in the Islamic republic's holy city of Qom.
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