Smoke rises from an unknown location in Lebanon
Three Hezbollah members were killed on Tuesday in a targeted attack on their vehicle in Ghandouriyé, a city in southern Lebanon, two sources close to Lebanon's Shiite movement said, while Israel said it killed a senior commander of the Iran-aligned group and supporters the Palestinian Hamas.
Israel and Hezbollah have increased gunfire and rocket attacks on the Israeli-Lebanese border since the Hamas attack in the south of the Jewish state on October 7 – border tensions unprecedented since the 2006 war.
The Israeli army spokesman said Tuesday evening that a senior Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon was killed in an attack in retaliation for an attack on an IDF military base in northern Israel.
Ali Hussein Barij, introduced as the head of the Party of God's air units in southern Lebanon, was responsible for firing dozens of drones into Israel, Daniel Hagari added.
In a statement released afterwards, Hezbollah denied any attempt to assassinate Ali Hussein Barij.
Israel killed Hezbollah military leader Wissam Tawil in an attack in southern Lebanon on Monday, according to sources close to the powerful Lebanese armed movement. The Jewish state has not commented on this death.
A Hezbollah official said the armed movement did not want an escalation of the conflict and portrayed the attack on the Israeli military base as retaliation after the killings of Wissam Tawil and senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in a Hezbollah stronghold on the outskirts Capital Beirut.
(Reporting on Laila Bassam in Beirut and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; French version Bertrand Boucey and Nicolas Delame, edited by Jean Terzian)