Israel claims to have killed another Hezbollah commander in Beirut strike

JERUSALEM

The Israeli army claimed Monday to have killed another Hezbollah commander in an airstrike in the Lebanese capital Beirut.

A military statement said Eid Hassan Nashar was killed in a strike on Saturday, calling him the head of Hezbollah’s medium-range rockets unit. The claim came in the wake of last week's Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The statement described Nashar as a “central source of knowledge in the field of rockets," saying he had previously served as the head of Hezbollah’s surface-to-surface missile unit and deputy head of the group's Badr unit.

The Israeli army also said that it had destroyed caches of medium-range rockets during its airstrikes in Lebanon, claiming that the rockets could reach up to 200 kilometers (124 miles).

There was no comment yet from Hezbollah on the Israeli claim.

Since Sept. 23, Israel has launched massive airstrikes against what it calls Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, killing more than 960 people and injuring over 2,770 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

Several Hezbollah leaders have been killed in the assault.

Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 41,600 people, mostly women and children, following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last October.

The international community has warned that Israeli attacks in Lebanon could escalate the Gaza conflict into a wider regional war.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar