Senior Hezbollah Commander Killed in Israeli Airstrike

Gaza – A senior commander of a secretive Hezbollah force was killed in an alleged Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Monday, ratcheting up tensions as violence along the border threatened to escalate into all-out war.

Wissam al-Tawil, the deputy head of a unit within the terror group’s elite Radwan force, was killed in the Lebanese town of Majdal Selm when a missile slammed into the SUV he was in, according to Lebanese security sources, in a strike that analysts said represented a significant blow to the Iran-backed group.

The apparent assassination will likely also complicate US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s bid to keep Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip from expanding into a second front, as the top US diplomat makes a whirlwind tour to the region.

Hezbollah confirmed that Tawil was killed, naming him as one of the group’s fighters but provided few other details.

The Israel Defense Forces said fighter jets carried out strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including sites where the terror group’s members were operating, but did not confirm that it had killed Tawil.

Tawil was from Khirbet Selm, which neighbors Majdal Selm, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) from northern Israel.

Lebanese security officials said a second Hezbollah operative in the car with Tawil was killed in the same strike.

Tawil was one of the most senior Hezbollah commanders killed since hostilities broke out on the Israel-Lebanon border exactly three months ago, said a source in Lebanon familiar with the matter.

Since October 8, Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets, drones and anti-tank missiles over the border in support of fellow terror group Hamas amid Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which followed the October 7 massacres in southern Israel.

“This is a very painful strike,” a second Lebanese security source said. 

Israel has threatened to go to war against the terror group if the strikes do not halt, with some 80,000 people from northern Israel currently displaced by the fighting, alongside tens of thousands from the south evacuated due to the Hamas onslaught and ensuing war.