JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah fired large barrages of rockets into Israel on Wednesday and vowed to intensify its attacks in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed a top commander of the Lebanese Shiite movement on Tuesday.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged fire since the Gaza war began in October, raising fears of widespread conflict.
The Israeli strike in the southern Lebanese village of Jouaiyya killed three Hezbollah fighters late Tuesday, as well as commander Taleb Abdallah, also known as Abu Taleb, Israel and three sources said. security in Lebanon.
He is the highest-ranking Hezbollah commander killed in eight months of hostilities, one of the sources said.
The Israeli military confirmed it killed him and the three other Hezbollah fighters in a strike on a command and control center.
Lebanese sources said he was Hezbollah’s commander for the central region of the border area with Israel in southern Lebanon.
He was the superior of Wissam Tawil, a Hezbollah military leader killed in January by an Israeli strike on Lebanese territory, the sources said.
Thousands of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets of Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs for a funeral procession, before Taleb Abdallah was later buried in southern Lebanon.
Speaking during the procession, a senior Hezbollah official, Hachem Safieddine, said the group would increase the intensity, strength and quantity of its operations against Israel.
“If the enemy cries and laments over what is happening to him in northern Palestine, let him prepare to cry and lament more,” he said.
According to a source close to security services in Lebanon, Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets towards Israel on Wednesday, which constitutes one of the group’s largest barrages since the start of hostilities.
Warning sirens sounded in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon.
Israel later said that around 90 projectiles had been spotted coming from Lebanon, a number of which were intercepted while others fell in various locations in the north of the country, causing fires.
(Laila Bassam in Beirut and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, with the contribution of Enas Alashray, written by Maya Gebeily; French version Camille Raynaud, Bertrand Boucey and Tangi Salaün, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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