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Israel mentioned on Tuesday it had killed a senior Hizbollah commander in an air strike on Beirut, stating the operation was retaliation towards the person answerable for a lethal rocket assault on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Israeli navy mentioned Fuad Shukr died within the assault on an space of southern Beirut that may be a Hizbollah stronghold.
The Israel Protection Forces described Shukr as Hizbollah’s most senior navy commander and right-hand man to Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group. Hizbollah has but to make an official remark concerning the Israeli strike.
The Israeli assault will stoke fears that intensifying clashes between Israel and Hizbollah might set off a full-blown warfare regardless of a flurry of US-led diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the state of affairs.
Tuesday’s strike marks the primary time Israel has focused a Hizbollah determine in Beirut since hostilities erupted between the 2 sides after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its assault on the Jewish state on October 7.
The IDF mentioned Shukr had helped plan and direct wartime operations by Hizbollah on Israel since October.
“Hizbollah’s ongoing aggression and brutal assaults are dragging the folks of Lebanon and your entire Center East right into a wider escalation. Whereas we choose to resolve hostilities with no wider warfare the IDF is totally ready for any state of affairs,” mentioned Israeli navy spokesperson Daniel Hagari.
The IDF mentioned Shukr was behind final Saturday’s strike on Majdal Shams within the Golan Heights, which was the deadliest incident for civilians in Israeli-controlled territory since Israel and Hizbollah began exchanging virtually each day fireplace practically 10 months in the past.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, mentioned Hizbollah had “crossed the purple line” with the strike, which killed 12 children on a soccer pitch within the city. Hizbollah denied accountability.
Lebanon’s state-run Nationwide Information Company mentioned the Israeli strike on Tuesday, carried out with a drone that launched three rockets, had focused the world round Hizbollah’s governing Shura Council within the densely populated Haret Hreik neighbourhood in Beirut.
A big explosion ripped via the world, with tv footage displaying a number of flooring of a residential constructing badly broken and huge plumes of smoke rising from it.
A minimum of three folks have been killed — a girl and two youngsters — and an extra 74 folks have been injured, some critically, the Lebanese ministry of well being mentioned.
Washington has described Shukr as a senior adviser to Nasrallah on navy affairs and a member of Hizbollah’s highest navy physique, the Jihad Council. The US positioned Shukr on its specifically designated international terrorist checklist in 2019.
The crucial query will probably be how Hizbollah, which is taken into account one of many world’s most closely armed non-state actors, responds to the Israeli strike.
Hizbollah has beforehand warned Israel towards “any assassination on Lebanese soil towards a Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian or Palestinian”, suggesting this may be met with a decisive response.
“The Israeli enemy has dedicated an amazing silly act in measurement, timing and circumstances by focusing on a wholly civilian space,” Hizbollah official Ali Ammar instructed the group’s Al-Manar TV following the Israeli strike. “The Israeli enemy pays a worth for this in the end.”
The hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah have resulted in casualties and displaced tens of 1000’s of individuals on either side of the Israeli-Lebanon border.
However that they had been principally contained to the border area, with neither aspect apparently eager to escalate to all-out warfare.
Talking within the aftermath of the Israeli strike, White Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mentioned the Biden administration was pushing for a diplomatic answer to convey an finish to the hostilities.
“We don’t consider that an all-out warfare is inevitable and we consider it will probably nonetheless be averted,” she added.
Iran’s international ministry condemned the Israeli assault as “a blatant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, in addition to a grave breach of worldwide legal guidelines”.
The UN particular co-ordinator for Lebanon known as for calm. “There isn’t any such factor as a navy answer,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert mentioned, urging Israel and Lebanon to discover all diplomatic avenues.
Fears of an escalation had been heightened earlier on Tuesday when an Israeli civilian was killed in a rocket assault in HaGoshrim, a kibbutz a number of kilometres from the Israeli border with Lebanon.
The Israeli navy mentioned about 10 rockets had “crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory”, and that whereas most have been intercepted, one had struck a kibbutz, ensuing within the dying.
Hizbollah mentioned it had launched two salvos of Katyusha rockets on the close by Beit Hillel barracks, “in response to” an Israeli strike in town of Jibchit in Lebanon.
The group additionally mentioned it had fired at Israeli fighter jets that broke the sound barrier in Lebanese air house, forcing the plane to show round. The Israeli navy didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Further reporting by Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and Felicia Schwartz in Washington
Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
