Hezbollah waiting for 'scientific evidence’ before confirming commander death
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00:00First and foremost, of course, we haven't seen yet an official statement by the Lebanese
00:06cabinet.
00:07However, the Lebanese cabinet and the prime minister held an emergency meeting earlier
00:12this morning.
00:14And the first thing was, of course, the story locally was much more important, given the
00:20fact that it was the first meeting after the Israeli airstrike in Beirut, southern suburb
00:25of Dahiyeh.
00:27But there is some sort of a–the prime minister and the cabinet members condemned the assassination
00:34of Ismail Haniyeh, seeing it as a serious threat to global and regional stability.
00:41And it's only coming hours after the main incident here, which is the assassination
00:46of the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukur.
00:49He is a very senior commander of Hezbollah, military advisor to the secretary general
00:54of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
00:56So the main story today in Lebanon is still the assassination that took place yesterday
01:01in Beirut, southern suburb, still not quite overshadowed by Ismail Haniyeh's assassination
01:07in Iran.
01:08Actually, it's linked to that assassination.
01:10So the two assassinations are seen in one lens here in Beirut as a sign that this conflict
01:15could be spiraling into something much larger.
01:19Well, Rouad, tell us a bit more about that, because at the moment, as far as we're understanding
01:24it here from Paris, there still hasn't been confirmation on the Lebanese side that the
01:29senior Hezbollah commander has been killed.
01:31The Israelis are saying that he has been killed.
01:33What more can you tell us about that?
01:36It is very interesting that after more than 12 hours of the assassination, Hezbollah issued
01:40a statement just a few hours ago mentioning that they do confirm that Fuad Shukur was
01:47in the building that was targeted.
01:49However, due to the difficulty of the situation and given that a number of the floors of that
01:54building have collapsed, it is still not confirmed whether he was dead or not.
02:03So one important word in the statement was that they are waiting for scientific evidence
02:10before declaring Fuad Shukur as dead.
02:15According to some sources, this could actually mean that they are waiting for DNA results
02:20and verification before they actually announce him dead.
02:26However, they did confirm that he was in that building.
02:31And one important thing is also the fact that Hezbollah mentioned in that statement that
02:36whether he is to be announced dead or not dead will likely impact the situation in the
02:41next few hours.
02:43So kind of hinting that whether they actually have to announce him dead by the end of the
02:48day, that this would probably lead to some sort of a bigger retaliation towards Israel
02:54and a bigger attack towards Israel, be it today or in the next few days in retaliation
02:59to this assassination.
03:00However, if it was an assassination attempt and he survived that assassination, which
03:05is very unlikely, the retaliation could be softer, if one could say.