By Maya Gebeily
(Reuters) – The head of Lebanon’s powerful armed group Hezbollah said on Wednesday that Israel’s killing of the deputy chief of allied Palestinian faction Hamas in Beirut was “a major, dangerous crime about which we cannot be silent”.
In a televised speech, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah offered his condolences to Hamas for what he called a “flagrant Israeli aggression” on Tuesday night that killed Saleh al-Arouri.
Tuesday’s strike hit the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, in what analysts have said could also be a message from Israel to Hezbollah that even its prime stronghold there can be reached.
It was the first strike to hit Beirut following almost three months of near daily fire between the Israeli military and Hezbollah that has been confined to the border region.
Hezbollah launched rockets across the border on Oct. 8 in support of Hamas, which had carried out a deadly assault into southern Israel the previous day that prompted a fierce Israeli bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah, founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, is the spearhead of a Tehran-backed alliance hostile to Israel and the United States. It fought a month-long war against Israel in 2006.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah’s “quick” action on Oct. 8 and the cross-border shelling since then had prevented a broader bombing campaign by Israel of Lebanon.
He vowed that there would be “no ceilings” and “no rules” to his group’s fighting if Israel chose to launch a war on Lebanon.
“Whoever thinks of war with us – in one word, he will regret it,” Nasrallah said.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
