Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Leader, Dead at 64

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militant Hezbollah organization in Lebanon for more than three decades, building it into a domestic political force and a potent regional military power with ballistic missiles that could threaten Tel Aviv, was killed on Friday in heavy Israeli airstrikes near Beirut. He was 64.

Both Hezbollah and Israel announced his death on Saturday. Israeli officials had said that Mr. Nasrallah was the target of the attack, which rocked the area known as the Dahiya, a dense urban area south of Beirut, with such violent force that residents fled in fear as a giant mushroom cloud rose over the city.

For almost two decades, since Hezbollah fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006, Mr. Nasrallah had largely avoided public appearances and eschewed using a telephone out of concern that he would be assassinated.

In recent weeks, Israel had carried out repeated airstrikes in the same area to kill other top Hezbollah commanders, including some founding members who had been with the organization since it was established in the early 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Mr. Nasrallah took over the group in 1992, at 32, after an Israeli rocket killed his predecessor. Over the years, his black beard turned white beneath the black turban that marked him as a revered Shiite Muslim cleric and a sayyid, a man who can trace his ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad.