Hezbollah attacks Israeli base with 62 rockets to retaliate the killing of a Hamas commander near Beirut

Shafaq News/ Lebanon's Hezbollah on Saturday more than 60 rockets at an Israeli military base, the group said, describing the barrage as a response to the killing of a Hamas deputy leader in Beirut.

"As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri... the Islamic resistance (Hezbollah) targeted the Meron air control base with 62 various types of missiles," the group said in a statement.

Yesterday, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said the response to the killing of al-Arouri in Lebanon earlier this week depends on the developments in the battlefield.

Nasrallah’s Friday speech came just three days after Hamas' deputy political head Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Dahiyeh district, south of Beirut.

The attack in the heart of the group's stronghold has raised questions about Hezbollah's reaction. The Iran-backed movement had been engaged in heavy fire exchanges with the Israeli army along the Lebanon-Israel border since the war in Gaza began and concerns are growing about the skirmishes expanding into a wider war.

While Nasrallah held off from announcing an all-out war, he described the attack that killed Arouri as "a major and serious violation", stressing that "the response is undoubtedly coming".

On Thursday, senior White House adviser Amos Hochstein had arrived in Tel Aviv for meetings with Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a US effort to de-escalate tensions between the Israeli military and Hezbollah that have grown since the Israel-Hamas war began Oct. 7.

The situation in Gaza remains dire, amid ongoing air and ground operations by the Israeli military. In addition to tens of thousands of civilian casualties, journalists are particularly at risk. On Friday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported that the death toll among media workers in the Palestinian enclave surpasses the mortality rate among combatants in recent wars.

The IFJ has recorded the death of 75 journalists in Gaza since Oct. 7 out of an estimated 1,000 working there before the war began — a mortality rate of 7.5%, which the IFJ has assessed far exceeds the death rate of US soldiers in past wars.

Israel launched an air, sea, and ground campaign in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas' surprise assault on Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 240 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

The hostilities in the besieged coastal enclave have left more than 22,000 people dead, 70% of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. At least 57,296 have been wounded and around 7,000 people are still missing and are presumably under the rubble.