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BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has led the Lebanese militant group for the past three decades, transforming it into one of the most powerful paramilitary groups in the Middle East.

Israeli airstrikes Friday afternoon knocked out six buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb of Haret Hreik, the largest strike in the Lebanese capital in nearly a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said the strike, which killed and wounded dozens of people, hit the headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut. Three major Israeli TV channels said Nasrallah was the target of the strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which has not been officially confirmed by Israel. Hezbollah officials did not comment.

Here’s a look at the leader:

Who is Hassan Nasrallah?

Under the leadership of the 64-year-old Nasrallah, Hezbollah has fought wars against Israel and taken part in the conflict in neighboring Syria, helping tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar Assad.

An astute strategist, Nasrallah reshaped Hezbollah into an archenemy of Israel, cementing alliances with Shiite religious leaders in Iran 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 holds the title of sayyid, an honorific meant to signify the Shiite cleric’s lineage dating back to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

A fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the United States and much of the West, he is also considered a pragmatist compared to the militants who dominated Hezbollah after its founding in 1982, during Lebanon’s civil war.

Despite the power he wields, Nasrallah has lived largely in hiding for fear of an Israeli assassination.

How he rose to power

Born in 1960 into a poor Shiite family in Beirut’s impoverished northern suburb of Sharshabouk, Nasrallah was later displaced to south Lebanon. He studied theology and joined the Amal movement, a Shiite political and paramilitary organization, before becoming one of Hezbollah’s founders.

Hezbollah was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members who came to Lebanon in the summer of 1982 to fight invading Israeli forces. It was the first group that Iran backed and used as a way to export its brand of political Islam.

Nasrallah built a power base as Hezbollah became part of a cluster of Iranian-backed factions and governments known as the Axis of Resistance.

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.

Five years later, the United States designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah 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, fighting against Israeli forces.

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.

That status was further cemented when, in 2006, Hezbollah fought Israel to a stalemate during the 34-day war.

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

Nasrallah’s role in the current conflict

A day after the Israel-Hamas war started on Oct. 7, Hezbollah began attacking Israeli military posts along the border calling it a “backup front” for Gaza.

In speeches throughout the conflict, he has argued that Hezbollah’s cross-border strikes had pulled away Israeli forces that would otherwise be focused on Hamas in Gaza and insisted that Hezbollah would not halt its attacks on Israel until a cease-fire is reached in Gaza.

Nasrallah has maintained a defiant tone, even as tensions rose dramatically in recent weeks with Israel announcing a new phase in the conflict intended to push Hezbollah back from the border to allow thousands displaced from northern Israel to return.

Israel launched strikes killing top military commanders with the group and was blamed for the explosion of thousands of communications devices, mainly used by Hezbollah members, that killed 37 people and wounded thousands.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — U.S. Peace Corps volunteers returned to El Salvador Friday for the first time since the American force left in 2016 because of violence in the Central American country.

It was the latest sign of a thaw in U.S. relations with El Salvador, whose President Nayib Bukele was once shunned because of his harsh crackdown on street gangs.

It was also a sign of how much Bukele’s widespread arrests of suspected gang members – which also jailed a considerable number of apparently innocent young men – has reduced the country’s once-fearsome homicide rate.

The Peace Corps said the first nine volunteers would work on community economic development, education, and youth initiatives. All nine had previously worked two-year stints in other Central American countries.

“Today is not just a celebration, it’s a commitment to continue building on the decades-long partnership with the people of El Salvador,” said Peace Corps Director Carol Spahn.

More than 2,300 Peace Corps Volunteers had worked in El Salvador since 1962. The Peace Corps volunteers left after El Salvador’s gang-fueled homicide rate reached a high of 106 murders per 100,000 inhabitants on 2015. That year there were 6,658 killings in the country of 6.3 million.

Under a state of emergency originally declared in 2022 and still in effect, Bukele’s government has rounded up about 81,900 suspected gang members in sweeps that rights groups say are often arbitrary, based on a person’s appearance or where they live. The government has had to release about 7,000 people because of a lack of evidence.

In July, the human rights organization Cristosal said at least 261 people have died in prisons during the crackdown.

While the government is accused of committing mass human rights abuses in the crackdown, Bukele remains highly popular in El Salvador because homicide rates sharply dipped following the detentions. The Central American nation went from being one of the most dangerous countries in the world to having the lowest homicide rate in the region.

In all of 2023, the country saw only 214 homicides, and 116 so far in 2024.

Bukele rode that popularity into reelection in February, despite the country’s constitution prohibiting second terms for presidents. The United States did not object and sent a high-level delegation to his inauguration for a second term.

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NEW YORK (AP) — A New York judge on Friday denied Gov. Kathy Hochul’s request to toss out lawsuits challenging her decision to halt a new congestion fee for drivers into Manhattan.

Judge Arthur Engoron made the decision in a Manhattan court after hearing about two hours of arguments in lawsuits brought by transportation and environmental advocates that support the fee.

The tolling program, which had been set to start June 30, would have imposed on drivers entering the core of Manhattan a toll of about $15, depending on vehicle type, in order to generate about $1 billion annually for transit improvements.

Andrew Celli, a lawyer representing the City Club of New York, one of the local groups that has sued Hochul, said afterward that the judge’s ruling means the lawsuits will move forward and the governor will have to justify her actions in court.

“What the judge did here is he said that congestion pricing will not be delayed by legal technicalities,” he said outside court. “That’s a huge victory for people that care about the law and people that care about congestion pricing.”

John Lindsay, a spokesperson for Hochul, declined to comment on the decision but said in a statement late Friday that the governor “like the majority of New Yorkers” still “believes this is not the right time to implement congestion pricing.”

Groups challenging the governor’s decision, including the Riders Alliance, the Sierra Club and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, argue the Democrat violated the state’s laws and constitution when she indefinitely paused the fee just days before its planned launch.

Hochul at the time cited economic concerns, suggesting it wasn’t the right time to impose a new toll scheme as local businesses and residents were still recovering financially from the coronavirus pandemic.

In court Friday, Celli argued that state lawmakers deliberately did not give the governor’s office authority on when the fee would be imposed when it passed it into law in 2019.

Instead, he argued, the legislature charged the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which oversees the bridges and tunnels in the New York City area, with making that final decision in order to remove politics from the equation.

“She doesn’t have the discretion,” Celli said.

But Alan Schoenfeld, a lawyer representing Hochul and the state Department of Transportation in the lawsuits, said it was a “demonstrably false” to suggest that state lawmakers intended to put the tunnel and bridge authority “unilaterally” in charge of congestion pricing.

He argued that the law also recognizes the critical role the governor’s office and state DOT play in the process.

Engoron, at points in the hearing, appeared unmoved by Schoenfeld’s arguments.

He also joked at the outset of the hearing that he drove into Manhattan for the hearing and the traffic was “terrible.”

“Can’t anyone do something about that?” Engoron said to laughs before launching into the proceedings.

Dror Ladin, a lawyer with Earthjustice, which represented some of the groups challenging Hochul, also argued that the months since the governor’s decision this summer have been damaging.

He says New Yorkers have dealt with more traffic, more negative health and environmental consequences from air pollution and further delays in desperately needed transit system upgrades.

“There’s a real harm here,” Ladin said.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.