The Israeli army announced that it had killed a commander of an elite Hezbollah unit during a raid on southern Lebanon overnight from Sunday to Monday.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestinian Hamas on October 7, daily exchanges of fire have pitted the Israeli army against Lebanese Hezbollah, which claims to support the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Israeli fighters “struck and eliminated Ali Ahmad Hussein, the commander of the al-Radwan forces of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the al-Houjair region,” said an Israeli army statement.
A Lebanese security source told AFP that a “leader of the al-Radwan forces” had been killed, as well as two other Hezbollah fighters, in an Israeli raid on Sultaniyé in southern Lebanon.
She said the official killed was Abbas Jaafar.
Hezbollah also announced on Monday the death of Ali Ahmad Hussein, whose nom de guerre Abbas Jaafar, without specifying where he was killed.
According to the Lebanese National Information Agency, the Israeli strike targeted “a house” and caused “enormous damage” in the village of Sultaniyé located a dozen kilometers from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas, Ali Ahmad Hussein had carried out “numerous shots towards Israeli territory”, underlined the Israeli army.
The strike targeting him came as the Israeli army claimed on Sunday to have concluded a “new phase of preparation for war” on the Lebanese front.
Its commanders, she said in a statement, are now able to “summon and equip all the necessary soldiers within hours and transport them to the front line for defensive and offensive missions.”
In recent months, Israel has stepped up deeper strikes into Lebanese territory and targeted several commanders of Hezbollah, which has a powerful arsenal of rockets and missiles.
It has also stepped up strikes against the Lebanese Islamist movement and other Iran-linked targets in Syria.