Nasrallah threatens Israel over Arouri hit, warns of war ‘without rules or limits’

Nasrallah threatens Israel over Arouri hit, warns of war ‘without rules or limits’

AGENCIES and TOI STAFF

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel against waging war on Lebanon in a televised address Wednesday, a day after a strike blamed on Israel killed Hamas’s political number two in a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern Beirut suburbs.

“If the enemy thinks of waging a war on Lebanon, we will fight without restraint, without rules, without limits and without restrictions,” Nasrallah said in his address, which had been pre-planned to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp general Qassem Soleimani.

“We are not afraid of war,” he said, adding that “for now, we are fighting on the frontline following meticulous calculations.”

Both the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group and Hamas have accused Israel of killing Salah al-Arouri in Dahiyeh, Beirut on Tuesday night, with Nasrallah describing the attack as a “major and dangerous crime” that “will not go unanswered and unpunished” — repeating a threat made by the group itself on Tuesday.

The strike that killed al-Arouri marked “the first time they target the southern suburbs in this way since 2006,” Nasrallah said, in reference to that year’s Second Lebanon War which saw Beirut’s southern suburbs bombed.

Israel had sent “messages” to indicate it “did not intend to target Lebanon or Hezbollah,” but was rather “settling scores” with Hamas leaders, the Hezbollah leader added.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari did not directly comment on al-Arouri’s killing Wednesday, but said the military was “highly prepared for any scenario” in its aftermath.

The attack on al-Arouri has sparked fears of a broader conflagration because he is the most high-profile figure to be killed since the October 7 Hamas massacres in southern Israel and because his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities started.