Nasrallah: Hezbollah delayed attack to keep Israel on edge, see outcome of Gaza truce talks

Shafaq News/ Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a televised speech on Sunday said that the delay in the group's retaliation for the July 30 assassination of its military commander Fuad Shukr was due to the Israeli and US military mobilization in the region.

He said that it was also intended as a punishment for Israel as the Hebrew state was kept waiting on edge for almost a month.

Nasrallah added that Hezbollah was waiting to see the outcome of ongoing truce talks between Hamas and Israel, and needed time to see if the “axis of Resistance” made up of Iran and its regional allies would respond at the same time, or separately.

He stressed that the group has followed up on its pledge to respond to the Israeli aggression in the southern suburb of Beirut, the Hezbollah stronghold in which Shukr was assassinated.

Nasrallah also noted that the retaliatory attack was conducted on the Arbaeen, a Shiite commemoration of the martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali, the third Shia imam.

Earlier today, Hezbollah said it has successfully completed the first phase of a retaliatory attack on Israel in response to the killing of Shukr at the end of July.

Earlier, Israel said it had launched airstrikes on southern Lebanon in a "preemptive" attack when it detected Hezbollah's preparation to attack northern Israel.

While Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging tit-for-tat attacks across the border with some intensity since the start of Israel's war on Gaza in October, this marks a significant escalation.

The Lebanese group said it fired more than 320 Katyusha rockets at 11 Israeli military bases and barracks, including the Meron base and four sites in the occupied Golan Heights.

Israel said 100 of its jets bombed thousands of Hezbollah launch sites in southern Lebanon half an hour before the planned Hezbollah launch, to protect Israelis from the planned attack.