Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah transformed the militant group into a potent regional force

BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who transformed the Lebanese militant group into a potent paramilitary and political force in the Middle East, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, the group said. He was 64.

Nasrallah, who spearheaded Hezbollah's war against Israel in 2006 and got the group heavily involved in neighboring Syria’s brutal conflict, was killed in a massive Israeli airstrike on the Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik Friday evening that knocked down several multistory apartment buildings.

“His eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, had joined his fellow great martyrs whom he had led for 30 years from one victory to another,” Hezbollah said in a statement. It added that Nasrallah “fell as a martyr on the road to Jerusalem.”

Nasrallah's death comes amid a dizzying escalation in the nearly yearlong conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, since the war in Gaza started, and more than three decades after he took leadership of the Iranian-backed militant group following the killing of his predecessor by an Israeli missile in 1992. Five years later, the United States designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas, an allied Iran-backed militant group. Israel has responded with increasingly heavy airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.

This week has been the deadliest in Lebanon since the bruising 2006 monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah.

First, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used mainly by Hezbollah members exploded in different parts of Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny responsibility. Nasrallah had promised to retaliate.

Then, Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed more than 700 people in five days, including at least 150 women and children, according to Lebanese authorities.

Nasrallah had said the barrages would continue — and Israelis wouldn't be able to return to their homes in the north — until Israel’s campaign in Gaza ended.

Seen by his supporters as a charismatic and shrewd strategist, Nasrallah had reshaped Hezbollah into an archenemy of Israel, cementing alliances with the ayatollahs in Tehran and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas.

Idolized by his Lebanese Shiite followers and respected by millions of others across the Arab and Islamic world, Nasrallah held the title of sayyid, an honorific meant to signify the Shiite cleric's lineage dating back to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Nasrallah’s image appears on billboards in the group’s strongholds across Lebanon — especially in southern Beirut, Hezbollah's headquarters — and on trinkets in souvenir shops not only in Lebanon but also in countries such as Syria and Iraq.

Despite the power he wielded, Nasrallah lived largely in hiding in the last years of his life for fear of an Israeli assassination, giving speeches to followers via a satellite link.

A fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the U.S. and much of the West, as well as in some oil-rich Gulf Arab countries, he was also considered a pragmatist compared with the firebrand militants who dominated Hezbollah after its founding in 1982, during Lebanon's civil war.

Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah fought Israel to a stalemate during the 34-day war in 2006 and was credited with leading the war of attrition that led to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon in 2000, after an 18-year occupation. Nasrallah's eldest son, Hadi, was killed in 1997, while fighting against Israeli forces.

When Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Hezbollah fighters rushed in, siding with Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces — even though Hezbollah's popularity took a dive as the Arab world ostracized Assad.

Along with Damascus' key allies Russia and Iran, Hezbollah played a major role in helping Assad stay in power and eventually retake territory lost in the early years of the conflict.

Hezbollah saw its popularity among Arabs surge again when it came to the defense of Hamas, opening a front with Israeli forces along the Israel-Lebanese border barely a day after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The Hamas-led attack killed around 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostage, triggering one of the most destructive military campaigns in modern history. Israel's subsequent aerial bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

In June 2024, Nasrallah warned Israel that Hezbollah had new weapons and capabilities. Nasrallah also claimed that Hezbollah now has a far higher number of fighters than the 100,000 figure he gave three years earlier.

Nasrallah, the eldest of nine siblings, was born into a poor family in Beirut’s impoverished northern suburb of Sharshabouk. In 1975, the Lebanese civil war forced the family to flee south, to their ancestral home in Bazzouriyeh, a village near the ancient Phoenician port city of Tyre.

There, Nasrallah joined the Amal movement, a political and paramilitary organization representing the once-marginalized Shiites in Lebanon, and soon began his rise as a revolutionary.

At the age of 16, he went to Iraq's holy Shiite city of Najaf where the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, lived in exile at the time and taught theology. Later, Nasrallah studied in the city of Qom, the seat of Iran’s religious hierarchy.

Nasrallah was among Hezbollah’s founders when the party was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members who came to Lebanon in the summer of 1982 to fight invading Israeli forces.

He built a power base as Hezbollah over time became part of a cluster of Iranian-backed factions and governments known as the Axis of Resistance. It was also the first group that Iran backed and used as a way to export its brand of political Islam.

Two days after its leader, 39-year-old Sayyed Abbas Musawi, was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship raid in south Lebanon, Hezbollah chose Nasrallah as its secretary-general in February 1992.

Like Musawi, Nasrallah was committed to the struggle against Israel and Khomeini’s anti-Western teachings, and famously declared: “America will remain the dreadful enemy and Israel a cancerous growth that should be uprooted.”

Wearing spectacles and sporting a bushy gray beard like many religious Shiite men, Nasrallah's image was far from that of a militant who commanded thousands of heavily armed, well-trained and battle-hardened followers.

He often paused in his speeches to make jokes or break into local dialect and once, responding to a reporter asking about his monthly salary during a television interview, Nasrallah said it was about $1,300.

Following the end of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, Nasrallah gradually turned the organization into a “state within a state,” with an elaborate social welfare network that provided schools, clinics, and housing in the impoverished and predominantly Shiite parts of Lebanon.

After Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Nasrallah rose to iconic status both within Lebanon and throughout the Arab world. His messages were beamed on Hezbollah's own radio and satellite TV station.

In a famous speech marking the Israeli withdrawal, he said: “It (Israel) has a nuclear weapon and the strongest air force in the region, but in truth, it is weaker than a spider’s web.”

As Israel, and later Syria, pulled their armies out of Lebanon, Nasrallah began to steer Hezbollah increasingly into the realm of politics. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the first after Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon, Hezbollah made substantial gains and joined the Cabinet for the first time, holding two seats.

In July 2006, after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack, Israel launched a monthlong massive air, sea and ground campaign against Lebanon. Nasrallah’s home and offices and much of the group’s infrastructure were destroyed, as well as much of south Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs.

Hezbollah fired around 4,000 rockets into Israel and after 34 days of fighting, a truce took effect and Nasrallah declared a “divine victory” over Israel.

While he was cheered for standing up to the Israeli army, Nasrallah was criticized by many for providing the spark for that war during which more than 1,200 people died in Lebanon — most of them civilians — and 159 in Israel.

Nasrallah later expressed regret — an unprecedented move for him — and said during a televised interview that Hezbollah had not expected “even one percent” that the capture of the Israeli soldiers “would lead to a war of this magnitude.”

“You ask me, if I had known ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not,” he said.

In May 2008, Hezbollah’s reputation suffered a setback when its fighters briefly seized much of west Beirut, turning their guns on local Lebanese foes after the government took measures against the group's private telecommunications network.

In the years that followed, a U.N.-backed tribunal in the Netherlands sentenced three Hezbollah members in absentia to five concurrent life sentences over the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Hezbollah ignored the tribunal and repeatedly denied its members were involved in the massive suicide bombing along the Beirut corniche that killed Hariri and 21 others, an attack that deeply divided Lebanon.

During the Arab Spring uprisings against autocratic governments, Hezbollah's close alliance with Syria and Iran opened the group to accusations that it was merely a well-armed tool of Damascus and Tehran.

Hezbollah was also pulled into the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and in 2016, the Saudi-led, six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council branded Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

But Hezbollah's anti-Israel campaign remained at its forefront as the group continued to build up its arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles, including precision-guided missiles, as well as drones.

After 2006, the Lebanon-Israel border remained mostly calm until Hamas' October 2023 deadly incursion into Israel. The next day, Hezbollah began attacking Israeli military posts and drawing Israeli fire in what became near-daily exchanges. Nasrallah said the aim was to ease the tension from the Gaza Strip.

Nasrallah is survived by his wife, Fatima Yassin. He also has three sons Jawad, Mohammed-Mahdi and Mohammed Ali, and a daughter Zeinab, as well as several grandchildren.

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, delivers a speech during the annual rally to mark Al-Quds Day, Jerusalem Day, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Oct. 28, 2005. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, center, speaks during the annual rally to mark Al-Quds Day, Jerusalem Day, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Oct. 28, 2005. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaks at a Beirut news conference Monday, July 22, 1996. (AP Photo/Ahmed Azakir, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, center, escorted by his bodyguards, waves to a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters during a rally in Beirut's southern suburbs, Monday Sept. 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, hands a certificate to the wife of a slain Hezbollah fighter during a ceremony in Beirut's southern suburbs, Sunday April 8, 2007. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivers a speech during the 14th commemoration of the death of his predecessor, Sheik Abbas Musawi, in Beirut, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a rally to mark Jerusalem day, in Beirut's southern suburb, on Aug. 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, speaks to the crowd in a rare public appearance during Ashura, that marks the death of Shiite Islam's Imam Hussein, in the suburbs of Beirut, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaks to the crowd in a rare public appearance during a rally to mark the Muslim holy day of Ashoura, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Tuesday Dec. 6, 2011. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaks to reporters in Beirut, Thursday, April 2, 1998. (AP Photo/Ali Mohamed, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, center, walks among crowds of supporters during a commemoration in Beirut's southern suburbs, Saturday, on Jan. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a banquet in Beirut, Wednesday Dec. 13, 2000. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, flanked by two bodyguards, speaks to thousands of supporters in Beirut's southern suburbs, Friday, Feb. 16, 2007. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

FILE - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, speaks during a press conference at Hezbollah headquarters in the southern suburb of Beirut, Monday June 5, 2006. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene caused at least 52 deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeastern U.S. as it raced through, and more than 3 million customers went into the weekend without any power and for some a continued threat of floods.

Helene blew ashore in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 140 mph (225 kph) and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. Video shows sections of Asheville underwater.

Francine Cavanaugh said she has been totally unable to reach her sister, son, or friends in the Asheville area.

“My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,” she said on Saturday. “The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.”

Cavanaugh said her sister had no idea how bad the storm would be there. She told Cavanaugh she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin “and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.”

She saw video of a grocery store near the cabins that was completely flooded.

“I think that people are just completely stuck, wherever they are, with no cell service, no electricity.”

There were hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. Several flood and flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of the southern and central Appalachians, while high wind warnings also covered parts of Tennessee and Ohio.

At least 48 people have been killed in the storm; among them were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

In the wealthy enclave of Davis Islands in Tampa, where star athletes like Derek Jeter and Tom Brady have lived, residents were continuing to clean up Saturday from storm surge left by Helene.

The neighborhoods that sit just off Tampa’s downtown and are home to about 5,000 people had never seen storm surge like it had Friday. No one died, but homes, businesses and apartments were flooded.

”I don’t think anybody was expecting it,” Faith Pilafas told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ve kind of gotten accustomed to lots of talk about big storms, and never actually like feeling the effects of it. So for all the people who didn’t leave the island, I feel like they were all just expecting it to be a normal storm, anticlimactic. And wow, were we surprised.”

Authorities warned residents to evacuate, and many did, but some stayed behind.

In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure had not failed.

Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.

Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours.

Florida's Big Bend is a part of the state where salt marshes and pine flatwoods stretch into the horizon, and where the condo developments and strip malls that have carved up so much of the state's coastlines are largely absent.

It’s a place where Susan Sauls Hartway and her 4-year-old Chihuahua mix Lucy could afford to live within walking distance of the beach on her salary as a housekeeper.

At least, until her house was carried away by Helene.

Friday afternoon, Hartway wandered around her street near Ezell Beach, searching for where the storm may have deposited her home.

“It’s gone. I don’t know where it’s at. I can’t find it,” she said of her house.

The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.

All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up having to hide in their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door-to-door in flooded areas.

More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin reported at least one death in his state.

President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late Friday morning.

Officials urged people who were trapped to call for rescuers and not tread floodwaters, warning they can be dangerous due to live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.

In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40% of customers were without power, said crews had to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.

The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appears to be greater than the combined effects of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.

The destruction extended far beyond Florida.

A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

Another slide hit homes in North Carolina and occupants had to wait more than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 center received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Friday.

“This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come,” Cole said.

Forecasters warned of flooding in North Carolina that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Georgia; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed.

Vehicles move slowly around trees that have fallen after of Hurricane Helene moved through the area, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Valdosta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Vehicles move slowly around trees that have fallen after Hurricane Helene, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Valdosta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Torrential rain from Hurricane Helene has caused lake levels to rise on Lake James, resulting in flooded docks and gazebos, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 in Morganton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)

Hailey Morgan, right, surveys the damage to their flooded home after returning with her children, Aria Skye Hall, 7, left, and Kyle Ross, 7, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Crystal River, Fla. Morgan stayed with her grandmother and her children in Hernando, Fla., as the storm made landfall. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

Destruction to the Faraway Inn Cottages and Motel is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Cedar Key, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A caravan of Army vehicles make their way through a street flooded by the passing of Hurricane John, in Acapulco, Mexico, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Bernardino Hernandez)

An airboat transports residents rescued from floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 in Crystal River, Fla. (Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

Leslie Sturmer, a University of Florida employee, and John Rittenhouse, general manager of the Cedar Key Water and Sewer District, both residents, talk in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Cedar Key, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Foundations and steps to buildings that were destroyed by the storm surge from Hurricane Helene are seen along the shoreline in the aftermath of the storm, in Cedar Key, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephen Smith)

A damaged 100-year-old home is seen after an Oak tree landed on it after Hurricane Helene moved through the area, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Valdosta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Thomas Chaves, left, and Vinny Almeida walk through floodwaters from Hurricane Helene in an attempt to reach Chaves's mother's house in the Shore Acres neighborhood Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in St. Petersburg, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Carlson)

This photo provided by Venice Police Department rescue crews assist residents after conducting door-to-door wellness checks, in coastal areas that were flooded by Hurricane Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 in Venice, Fla . (Venice Police Department via AP)

Residents work together to push a vehicle stuck on a street flooded by the passing of Hurricane John, in Acapulco, Mexico, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Bernardino Hernandez)

Capt. BJ Johnston, a law enforcement officer from the Florida Fish Wildlife and Conservation Commission surveys destruction from a high water buggy in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Cedar Key, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A dog wades through floodwaters near collapsed homes in Dekle Beach on the coast of rural Taylor County, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)

This satellite image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration taken at 6:11pm ET shows Hurricane Helene, which weakened into a post-tropical cyclone, over the United States on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (NOAA via AP)

A Citrus County Firefigher carries 11-year- old, Michael Cribbins, while conducting rescues from floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 in Crystal River, Fla. (Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

MJ Hodges, left, and her mother Jill Rice look at the damage caused to their store from the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Gulfport, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Carlson)

Dustin Holmes, rear, his girlfriend Hailey Morgan, and her children Aria Skye Hall, 7, left, and Kyle Ross, 4, right, arrive to their flooded home in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Crystal River, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

This photo provided by U.S. Coast Guard District Seven (USCGSoutheast) shows a man and his dog being rescued after his sailboat became disabled during Hurricane Helene approximately 25 miles off Sanibel Island, Fla., on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (U.S. Coast Guard District Seven via AP)

Dustin Holmes, second from right, holds hands with his girlfriend, Hailey Morgan, while returning to their flooded home with her children Aria Skye Hall, 7, right, and Kyle Ross, 4, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Crystal River, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

Destruction to the Faraway Inn Cottages and Motel is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Cedar Key, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephen Smith)

Jill Rice looks over the damage to her store caused by flooding from Hurricane Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Gulfport, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Carlson)