Hezbollah Chief Warns of ‘Inevitable’ Response to Arouri’s Murder

The head of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group warned Israel today that it will respond swiftly “on the battlefield” to the killing of Hamas’s deputy leader in one of its Beirut strongholds.

“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-Arouri.

“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 Arouri 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 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 Oct 7, but the Arouri killing has led to fears of an escalation.

Nearly three months of cross-border fire have left 175 people in Lebanon dead, including 129 Hezbollah fighters, but also more than 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.

Since the Beirut strike, the group has carried out around 670 operations, targeting 48 Israeli border positions and 11 rear beases, Nasrallah said.

In northern Israel, nine soldiers and at least four civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.