Beirut  -  Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday that Israel killed Hashem Safieddine, the apparent successor of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a strike, without saying when or where it happened.

The announcement came a day after Israel said he was killed along with other Hezbollah leaders in an air strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs three weeks ago.

“We mourn … the head of the Executive Council of Hezbollah, his eminence the scholar Sayyed Hashem Safieddine,” the group said in a statement, adding he was killed by “a criminal and aggressive Zionist raid” alongside other Hezbollah fighters.

The deeply religious Safieddine, a cleric with family ties to Nasrallah, had been widely viewed as the most likely candidate for the party’s top job after the assassination of Nasrallah on September 27 in a huge Israeli air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Safieddine, a member of the group’s governing Shura Council, had strong ties to Iran after undergoing religious studies in Iran’s holy city of Qom.

The United States and Saudi Arabia had put him on their respective lists of designated “terrorists” in 2017.

Last week, Israel claimed to have killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in Gaza. Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza, which filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to a video released by Israeli authorities.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s operations room said on Wednesday its fighters had killed more than 70 Israeli troops in its clashes with Israeli forces, updating from a statement last week saying 55 were killed.

It did not say in what time frame they were killed. Israel has said it has lost around 20 soldiers inside Lebanon since its ground operations began, and around 30 more in Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel.