Iran announced today that its ally Hezbollah should strike Israel "in depth" and not limit itself to military targets, in response to the assassination of the military chief of the Lebanese extremist movement near Beirut.
Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday night, in an attack that killed six others, including five civilians.
In a speech on Thursday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to respond to the "aggression" on a Hezbollah stronghold in the Lebanese capital, sparking fears of a new escalation.
After that strike, "we predict that Hezbollah will choose more targets and will strike deep (in Israel)," the Iranian representation at the United Nations announced today, as reported by the official Iranian news agency Irna.
Hezbollah, an ally of Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas, has exchanged fire almost daily with the Israeli army along the Israeli-Lebanese border since the start of the Gaza war on October 7, triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel by the Islamist movement Hamas.
"Hezbollah and the (Israeli) regime respected certain lines of attack that the (Tuesday evening) strike crossed," the Iranian representative office said.
Therefore, the Lebanese movement will not limit its response to military targets, the statement added.
Iran and Hamas also accused Israel of killing the head of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on Wednesday and vowed to retaliate.
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