LEBANON – The Israeli military says it has killed a Hezbollah commander in an overnight air strike in Lebanon, as the United Nations warns that shelling was spreading and urges a halt to the cycle of violence.
Ali Ahmad Hussein of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force was “eliminated” by Israeli jets in the area of as-Sultaniyah in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said in a statement yesterday, accusing him of attacks against Israeli targets in recent months.
At least three other Hezbollah fighters were also killed in the strike, Al Jazeera has learned.
Meanwhile, dozens of rockets have been launched from Lebanon into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Hezbollah fighters said they were targeting an army base and air defence posts in the area.
Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire across Lebanon’s southern frontier in parallel with the Gaza war, adding to fears of a wider regional conflict.
Israeli strikes have killed about 270 Hezbollah fighters in the last six months, as well as around 50 civilians, including children, medics and journalists.
Hezbollah’s rocket fire has killed around a dozen Israeli soldiers and half as many civilians.
The shelling has displaced more than a hundred thousand people on each side of the border, and hit the farming economy in southern Lebanon particularly hard, with bombed-out fields left unplanted or unharvested.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Kafra in southern Lebanon, said the cross-border fighting and strikes illustrate the “changing dynamics in the past months” since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“At the beginning, the conflict was contained. But now, we can’t say that anymore,” he said, citing as an example the “unprecedented” Hezbollah attack in the occupied Golan Heights.
In a joint statement yesterday, UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, and the commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, Aroldo Lazaro, said the violence must stop.
“The unrelenting cycle of strikes and counterstrikes in breach of the cessation of hostilities constitute the most serious violation of Security Council Resolution 1701 since its adoption in 2006,” they said.
That UN decision ended a monthlong war between Hezbollah and Israel nearly two decades ago but many of its points – including a withdrawal of armed groups from the south and deployment of Lebanese army troops – were never implemented.
(Al Jazeera)…[+]