THE head of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group warned Israel Friday that it will respond swiftly “on the battlefield” to the killing of Hamas’s deputy leader in its southern Beirut stronghold.
“The response is inevitably coming. We cannot remain silent on a violation of this magnitude because it means the whole of Lebanon would be exposed,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
“The decision is now in the hands of the battlefield,” he said in his second speech since the killing of Saleh al-Aruri.
“Fighters from all areas of the border… will be the ones responding to the dangerous violation in the suburbs,” he added.
A strike on Tuesday, widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, killed Aruri in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold.
He is the most high-profile Hamas figure to be killed during the war, and his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.
In a speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah had already warned Israel against waging war on Lebanon, threatening that the group’s response would be “without limits”.
Hezbollah and its arch foe Israel have exchanged near-daily fire over their border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, but the Aruri killing has led to fears of an escalation.
Since hostilities began, the group has carried out around 670 operations, targeting 48 Israeli border positions and 11 rear sites, Nasrallah said.
