Hezbollah says Israeli strike kills senior commander

BEIRUT (AFP): Hezbollah said an Israeli strike Wednesday killed a senior commander from the group in south Lebanon, the Iran-backed movement’s second such casualty in recent weeks.

Hezbollah has traded near daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in Gaza.

“A Hezbollah commander responsible for one of three sectors in south Lebanon was killed” in an “Israeli strike on a car in Tyre”, a source told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Hezbollah said later in a statement that “commander Mohammed Naameh Nasser”, also known as “Hajj Abu Naameh” had been killed, while another source close to the group confirmed he was killed in the strike in Tyre.

That source, also requesting anonymity, said he was the third senior Hezbollah commander to be killed in almost nine months of hostilities.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said “an enemy drone targeted a car” in Tyre, a coastal city around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border.

The first source said Nasser had the same ranking as Taleb Abdallah, a commander killed in an Israeli strike last month.

A Lebanese military source had described Abdallah as the “most important” Hezbollah member to be killed since the hostilities began.

That strike prompted Hezbollah to intensify its attacks on Israeli targets, firing barrages of rockets across the border in the days that followed.

In January, a security source had said an Israeli strike killed Wissam Hassan Tawil, another top commander from the group.

 ‘Prevent a conflagration’

 Wednesday’s violence came after a relative drop in the intensity of the cross-border clashes over the past week.

Fears the exchanges could turn into a all-out war and a broader regional conflict have sparked diplomatic efforts to dial down tensions.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent a “conflagration” between Israel and Hezbollah.

Macron “reiterated his serious concern over a deepening of tensions between Hezbollah and Israel… and underscored the absolute need to prevent a conflagration that would harm the interests of Lebanon as well as Israel,” the French presidency said in a statement.

US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has made repeated visits to Lebanon in recent months, was due in Paris on Wednesday where he was set to meet with Macron’s Lebanon envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Iran on Saturday warned that “all Resistance Fronts”, a grouping of Iran and its regional allies, would confront Israel if it attacked Lebanon.

Nearly nine months of cross-border violence has killed at least 494 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 Israeli soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.