Hezbollah vows 'decisive' response to Israel killing of commander

"The resistance cannot but respond. This is certain," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech.

An Israeli strike on an area south of Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah's head of military operations, along with an Iranian military adviser and five civilians.

Shukr's death is the most serious blow to Hezbollah in nearly two decades and threatens to push a tit-for-tat war across Lebanon's southern border, parallel to the war in Gaza, into a full-blown regional conflict.

Just hours after Shukr's death, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in the Iranian capital Tehran in an attack believed to have been carried out by Israel but for which Israel has not officially claimed responsibility.

“We are looking for a real response, not a show response, and for real opportunities. A well-calculated response,” Nasrallah stressed.

He said the Israeli strikes on Beirut and Tehran, along with a US strike in a province south of Baghdad, within hours showed the conflict had entered a new phase of regional war on multiple fronts.

Nasrallah said some countries had asked his group to retaliate in an “acceptable” way or not to retaliate at all. He condemned those efforts and said the response would be proportional to Israel’s attack on a civilian building on the outskirts of the capital.

Nasrallah also said that the usual operations against Israel would continue and that retaliation for Shukr's death would come later. He concluded that: "There will be no other solution than to stop the attack on Gaza."

Hong Hanh (according to Reuters)