(Beirut) Hezbollah launched a hail of rockets on northern Israel on Wednesday and promised to intensify its attacks to avenge the death the day before of a top military commander in a targeted Israeli strike on southern Lebanon.
Taleb Sami Abdallah is “the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed since the start of the war” between Israel and Palestinian Hamas in Gaza eight months ago, according to a Lebanese military source.
The Israeli army indicated that around 160 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Wednesday morning, in successive barrages, without causing any casualties according to initial information from the authorities.
Hezbollah announced that it had fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at Israeli military positions and claimed to have hit “a military factory” using guided missiles “in response to the assassination” of this military leader.
Taleb Sami Abdallah was killed along with three other Hezbollah fighters in a strike Tuesday evening on a house in the southern Lebanese village of Jouaiyya, according to a source close to Hezbollah.
The Israeli army confirmed having carried out “an air raid” to eliminate Abdallah and three other fighters from Hezbollah, a Lebanese formation armed and financed by Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy.
She claimed that Abdullah was “one of Hezbollah’s most important commanders in southern Lebanon” and had “planned and executed attacks” against Israel for years.
“If the message from the enemy […] is to push us to retreat […], let him know that we will increase our operations in intensity, power, number and quality,” warned a senior official of the Hezbollah.
Hachem Safieddine, head of Hezbollah’s executive committee, spoke at Abdallah’s funeral in the southern suburbs of Beirut, stronghold of the Shiite group.
Fighters in fatigues, wearing black berets, carried the coffin, covered with the Hezbollah flag, to the sound of a military fanfare.
Abdallah’s death is the hardest blow for the Islamist group since it opened the southern Lebanese front against Israel in October, to support its Palestinian ally, Hamas, in its war in Gaza.
In January, Wissam Tawil, a commander of the Al-Radwan force, Hezbollah’s elite unit, was killed in an operation blamed on Israel. Hezbollah posted a photo online on Wednesday showing him alongside Abdallah.
“The Israeli enemy has dealt a severe and painful blow to the Islamic Resistance,” wrote the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, close to Hezbollah, on Wednesday.
He considered that this attack “constituted a dangerous escalation on the part of the enemy”, while the exchanges of fire have increased in intensity in recent days.
Warning sirens sounded several times on Wednesday in northern Israel.
Several projectiles were intercepted, but others fell in northern Israel, causing fires in places, the Israeli army said without specifying the extent.
The Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, indicated that no injuries had been recorded at the end of the morning.
This escalation comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 5 that Israel was “ready for a very intense operation in the north.”
The remarks sparked concern in the United States, with Washington warning its ally that an “escalation” in Lebanon would jeopardize Israel’s security.
But analyst Amal Saad, Hezbollah expert, believes that the Lebanese Islamist movement will not “change its calculations” after the death of this commander.
“It is a controlled escalation and Hezbollah is becoming more and more daring in its responses […], but this in no way means that Hezbollah wants war,” she told AFP.
Hezbollah repeats that it will stop the fighting when a ceasefire is declared in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
More than eight months of almost daily violence have left at least 468 dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP count based on data from the Shiite movement and official Lebanese sources.
They include around 90 civilians and nearly 307 Hezbollah fighters, more than the Lebanese movement lost in its last war with Israel in 2006.
On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to authorities. On both sides of the border, tens of thousands of residents have been displaced by the fighting.
