The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday (9) that they killed, in an airstrike, the commander of a Hezbollah unit in southern Lebanon, amid an increase in tension in the region a day after the assassination of another commander of the terrorist group.
An Israeli Air Force aircraft “eliminated today [terça-feira] the commander of Hezbollah's air unit in southern Lebanon”, who was identified as Ali Hussein Barji.
He was accused of commanding “dozens of terrorist activities against Israel using explosive and surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as this Tuesday’s attack on an IDF headquarters in northern Israel.”
An IDF spokesperson added that prior to this operation, “a launch cell [de foguetes] of the Hezbollah airborne unit, which was heading to launch explosive drones into Israel, was eliminated.”
The IDF does not usually openly acknowledge these attacks, and the announcement was made at a time when United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting the country as part of his trip to the Middle East, which seeks to mitigate the spread of a conflict region, in addition to the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The air strike that killed the commander of this terrorist group's air unit hit a vehicle on the outskirts of the place where the funeral of another Hezbollah commander killed on Monday (8) was being held, in yet another aerial bombing attributed to Israel.
The senior officer killed yesterday was Wissam Hassan Taweel, commander of the elite Radwan special forces, whose vehicle was hit. He became the group's biggest casualty since hostilities with Israel began on October 8.
Tensions between Israel and Lebanon have been rising since Tuesday last week, when a bomb attack in Beirut, blamed on Israel, killed Hamas' second-leading leader, Saleh Al Arouri.
Since then, fears of a wider conflict between the two sides have been growing.
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