Hezbollah confirms martyrdom of senior commander in Israeli Beirut attack

The group provided the information on Wednesday, identifying the victims as Ibrahim Mohammed Qobaisi, aka Haj Abu Musa, and Hussein Hani Ezz el-Din, aka Hajj Fares.

It denounced the raid as “a treacherous Israeli assassination operation,” which, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, claimed the lives of six people and wounded 15 others.

Hezbollah also published Qobaisi’s biography, in which it credited the 62-year-old with having served the group since its inception in 1982.

Upon joining the movement, Qobaisi “rose through the ranks of organizational responsibilities within the structures of the Islamic Resistance and underwent many senior leadership courses,” Hezbollah said.

His leadership roles featured his commanding Hezbollah’s Badr Military Unit between 2001 and 2018 and leading a number of the group’s rocket formations among other things, it noted.

Throughout his membership of the movement, Qobaisi “supervised and planned many operations of the Islamic Resistance against the Israeli occupation,” the group stated.

The assassinations came as part of the Israeli regime’s escalation against Lebanon, which has been targeting the country since October 7, when the regime launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

As part of the escalation, the regime carried out extensive airstrikes against southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 569 people, including 50 children and 94 women, and wounding 5,000 others.

The attacks came less than a week after the regime killed 38 people, including three children and seven women as well as Ibrahim Aqil, another one of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, in an attack on a residential building in a southern Beirut suburb.

A couple of days earlier, it had also detonated thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkie radios across the country, killing at least 39 people and wounding 3,000 others.

Hezbollah has been responding to the aggression with numerous operations against the occupied Palestinian territories.

Earlier this week, the group launched its farthest-reaching strikes on the territories since October, hitting Ramat David, an Israeli air force base, and the facilities of the Rafael weapon manufacturing company near the city of Haifa as well as many other targets.

The movement has vowed to respond with all its resources and prowess in the event of another wholesale Israeli war.

The regime waged wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 only to be forced into beating humiliating retreats as a result of Hezbollah’s decisive defensive operations.