Commander Of The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Elite Unit Brigadier General Cannot Be Contacted Since The Attack On Beirut

JAKARTA - Quds Troop Commander, Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) elite unit Brigadier General Esmail Qa'ani who traveled to Lebanon after the assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last month in Israeli airstrikes, has not been heard since the attack in Beirut late last week, two senior Iranian security officials said.

One official told Reuters as quoted October 7, Brigadier General Qa'ani was on the southern outskirts of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, during the reported attack targeting senior official Hezbollah Hashem Safieddine, but said Brigadier General Qa'ani had not met Safieddine.

A Hezbollah official said Israel would not allow Safieddine's search to resume after bombing Beirut's southern suburbs on Thursday. Officials said the group would only announce the fate of Safieddine, one of Nasrallah's successors, after the search was completed.

The Iranian official said Iran and Hezbollah had not been able to contact Qaani, who was appointed by Tehran as head of the Quds Forces, after the United States killed its predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Israel is known to have attacked several targets in Dahiyeh while launching a campaign against Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Meanwhile, a second Iranian official also said Qaani had traveled to Lebanon after the assassination of Nasrallah and Iranian authorities had not been able to contact her since the attack on Safieddine, which is widely expected to be Hezbollah's next head.

Separately, when asked about Qaani's report that she may have been killed in an Israeli attack on Beirut, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said the results of the attack were still in the assessment stage.

He said Israel had launched an attack late last week on Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters in Beirut.

"When we have more specific results from the attack, we will share them. There are many questions about who is there and who isn't," he told a news conference with reporters.