Good morning. It's Saturday, September the 28th. I'm Ali Valshi. We begin with the breaking news out of the Middle East, where Hezbollah has confirmed that Israel has killed the group's longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in strikes late last night on an apartment complex in

Beirut, which is the capital of Lebanon. Israel says Hezbollah was using the complex as an underground

headquarters. Now, this represents a major escalation of the ongoing back and forth between Israel and

Hezbollah, which Israel has significantly intensified in the last couple of weeks. In a statement, Israel also says the strikes killed a high-ranking Hezbollah, which Israel has significantly intensified in the last couple of weeks.

In a statement, Israel also says the strikes killed a high-ranking Hezbollah commander and other

senior leaders of the organization.

Israel says other strikes in Beirut yesterday targeted Hezbollah weapons caches.

Nasrallah is a Shiite cleric. He's led Hezbollah since 1992. It's grown into the,

he's grown the group into the most powerful Iranian-backed force in the region, both militarily and

politically, building Hezbollah into what has been called a state within a state. He also led the

group through decades of conflict with Israel and participated in Syria's brutal civil war on behalf of the Assad regime.

Hezbollah has also helped train other Iranian-backed regional militias, including Hamas and the Houthis.

The Biden administration says it was not alerted ahead of time to yesterday's strikes in Beirut.

In a statement, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said that its axis of resistance will, quote, respond with force at the right time and that Israel has, quote, opened the gates of hell against itself, end quote.

This morning, Israel carried out more strikes in Lebanon and Hezbollah fired more rockets into Israel. Joining me now from Beirut is NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley, who has

been following this story and Hezbollah for a very, very long time.

Matt, give me a sense of what's going on, where you are and what is likely to happen

as a result of these attacks.

Well, we don't know what's going to be happening, but as I told you a little earlier, Ali,

I've been hearing gunshots behind me and actually a further explosion right in this neighborhood

of Dachia, which is exactly around where we saw yesterday, that huge, not one explosion,

but multiple explosions, a succession of what sounded like

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