The latest in targeted killings of senior Hezbollah officials came as Lebanese officials considered a United States-led cease-fire proposal. Israel also bombed several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has long been headquartered, after warning people to evacuate.

Mohammed Afif, the head of media relations for Hezbollah, was killed in a strike on the Arab socialist Baath party’s office in central Beirut, according to a Hezbollah official who was not authorized to brief reporters and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Afif had been especially visible after all-out war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah in September and the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike. Last month, Afif hastily wrapped up a press conference in Beirut ahead of Israeli strikes.

There was no Israeli evacuation warning before the strike in central Beirut. An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw four bodies and four wounded people, but there was no official word on the toll. People could be seen fleeing. There was no comment from the Israeli military.

“I was asleep and awoke from the sound of the strike, and people screaming, and cars and gunfire,” said Suheil Halabi, a witness. “I was startled, honestly. This is the first time I experience it so close.”

The last Israeli strike in central Beirut was on Oct. 10, when 22 people were killed in two locations.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel the day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack ignited the war in Gaza. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes in Lebanon and the conflict steadily escalated, erupting into war in September. Israeli forces invaded Lebanon on Oct. 1.

Hezbollah has continued to fire dozens of projectiles into Israel daily and has expanded their range to central Israel. The attacks have killed at least 76 people, including 31 soldiers, and caused some 60,000 people to flee in the north. A rocket barrage on the northern city of Haifa on Saturday damaged a synagogue and wounded two civilians.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country’s Health Ministry, and over 1.2 million driven from their homes. It is not known how many of the dead are Hezbollah fighters.

Lebanon’s army, largely on the sidelines, said an Israeli strike on Sunday hit a military centre in southeastern Al-Mari, killing a soldier and wounding three others. There was no immediate Israeli comment.

Born in Bilbao in 1976, Santiago Abascal completed his university studies at the University of Deusto, where he graduated as a sociologist in 2003. An influential social media figure with more than 240,000 followers on Instagram, he is married to Lidia Bedman and has four children.

His political career and his ability to mobilise conservative sectors have significantly transformed the Spanish political landscape in the last decade. Abascal has also left his mark in the intellectual sphere through the Foundation for the Defence of the Spanish Nation (Denaes), which he founded in 2006, and the Disenso Foundation, where he serves as president.

Political career: increasingly right-wing

Abascal’s political career began in 1994 in the conservative Partido Popular (PP), where he held various positions of responsibility, including on the Álava provincial committee and the presidency of the party’s youth wing.

However, his disagreements over policy with former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, especially on issues related to ETA and Catalan independence, led him to leave the PP in 2013.

The turning point in Abascal’s career came with the founding of Vox, the far-right party he chairs, which has transformed the Spanish political scene. Under his leadership, Vox achieved a historic milestone in 2018 gaining parliamentary representation in Andalusia, becoming the first nationalist party to win regional seats since 1975.

Abascal’s influence in Spanish politics is reflected in his ability to mobilise his followers and generate public debate.** While experts point out that his support base is relatively limited compared to the overall population, his impact on national political discourse is significant.

His leadership of Vox, renewed until 2028, has been instrumental in establishing the party as a relevant actor in Spanish politics, although analysts consider that the PP remains the dominant force in the centre-right spectrum.

The party he leads has managed to position itself as the third political force in the Spanish Congress of Deputies, obtaining 33 seats in the 2023 elections. In addition, Vox has managed to form part of regional governments in coalition with the PP in regions such as the Valencian Community, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands.

Political vision and international projection

Abascal has built a network of international alliances with prominent conservative leaders, including links with Donald Trump, Meloni, Javier Milei and Viktor Orbán. His political vision focuses mainly on:

• Defending national unity
• Migration control
• Reform of European institutions

Last summer the party organised a Vox VIVA24 rally in which other significant right-wing world figures such as Milei, already president of Argentina, and Viktor Orbán, among others, were present.

The leader of Spain’s nationalist Vox party Santiago Abascal has been appointed the chairman of the right-wing Patriots for Europe party during a general assembly held in Paris on Saturday.

Spain’s nationalist Vox party, with six MEPs, left the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group to join the Patriots for Europe in July.

Vox leader Abascal said at the time that the decision was a response to the ‘historic opportunity’ to fight against a coalition of centre-right, socialist and far-left forces.

Abascal was voted to be the chairman of the pan-European Patriots party, as distinct from the group in the European Parliament, during the party’s general assembly held in Paris. There were no other candidates for the position.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán formed the Patriots in the wake of the success of many far-right parties in the EU’s parliamentary elections in June.

Most of them are now members of the Patriots for Europe and some of them met in Brussels in October for the first time before a summit of European leaders.

Belgian MEP Gerolf Annemans – the group’s president – told Euronews that the main topic of that meeting was migration and “the way the European Union should treat member states that are in difficulties”.

Orban, Abascla and Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen from France’s National Rally, as well as Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini and Geert Wilders, president of the Dutch Party for Freedom are the group’s main figures.

Other far-right parties include: the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens in the Czech Republic, Chega in Portugal, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, People’s Party in Denmark, Voice of Reason in Greece, and Latvia First.