Benjamin Netanyahu left Israel for New York to “trick” Hezbollah’s leader into thinking he was safe, a senior Israeli official told The Telegraph.
Mr Netanyahu’s address to the UN was part of a “diversionary plan” intended to make Hassan Nasrallah believe Israel would not take drastic action with the prime minister out of the country.
Israel struck Beirut with a massive air strike on Friday that shook the Lebanese capital.
Mr Nasrallah was believed to be watching Mr Netanyahu’s speech “and was then attacked by Israeli Air Force planes”, the official said.
“Netanyahu approved the strike before delivering his speech at the UN,” the official added.
He went on to say that the Israeli assessment was that Mr Nasrallah was in the building at the time of the strike.
There are conflicting reports about his fate, however. Iran has said that the Hezbollah chief is in “good health”.
The attack came minutes after Mr Netanyahu vowed to continue operations against Hezbollah while addressing the UN chamber.
He struck a defiant tone, telling delegates that Israel would “continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met”.
Israel’s prime minister made little mention of the US-led peace plan that aims to establish a 21-day ceasefire between the IDF and Hezbollah.
He told the UN: “We will not accept a terror army parked on our northern border…able to perpetrate another October 7th-style massacre.”
On Friday night, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief lamented that no world power, including the US, can “stop” Mr Netanyahu.
Josef Borrell told reporters that Israel’s prime minister seems determined to crush militants in Gaza and Lebanon with or without Western approval.
“What we do is to put all diplomatic pressure to a ceasefire, but nobody seems to be able to stop Netanyahu, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank,” Mr Borrell said.
On Friday night Israel launched a new wave of air strikes on Beirut, targeting six suburbs in the south of the Lebanese capital that it said were being used by Hezbollah to store weapons.
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