Massive consecutive strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs from late Saturday into Sunday, Reuters eyewitnesses said, sending booms across the city and sparking flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away. The strikes came after days of bombing by Israel of Beirut suburbs considered strongholds for Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and possibly his potential successor. A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, the potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli airstrike near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him. The Israeli military said it eliminated Nasrallah in a strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut on Sept. 27. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in major cities around the world on Saturday demanding an end to bloodshed in Gaza and the wider Middle East as the start of Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave approaches its first anniversary.

Russia’s envoy to the U.S., a Kremlin hard-liner, was returning to Moscow on Saturday, state media reported, with the end of his term coming at a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday returned to the rural Pennsylvania site where he was nearly assassinated, rallying a large crowd in the critical battleground state one month before the Nov. 5 election.