The chief of Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed retaliation once again on Friday for the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in an alleged Israeli strike earlier in the week in Beirut.
“The murder of al-Arouri … will certainly not go without reaction and punishment,” Nsrallah said during a speech via video link to commemorate the passing away of a Hezbollah official.
“If we remain silent about the killing of al-Arouri, Lebanon will be exposed …,” he said, adding that “the response will inevitably come.”
The killing of al-Arouri on Tuesday in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah, raised fears that the Gaza war could spread to Lebanon.
However, Nasrallah refrained in his Friday speech from declaring war on Israel.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war following the massacre by terrorists from the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement and other extremists in Israel on October 7, there have been almost daily confrontations between Israel’s army and Hezbollah in the border region.
