Israel hit kills top leader in Lebanon

Israel has killed a top Hezbollah commander in a strike on southern Lebanon, the Iran-backed group and a security official said, as regional tensions soar amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Hezbollah in a statement announced the killing of a “commander” for the first time in three months of cross-border clashes with Israeli forces.

It said Wissam Hassan Tawil had died “on the road to Jerusalem” – the phrase used by the Shiite Muslim movement for fighters killed by Israel.

A security source said Tawil “had a leading role in managing Hezbollah’s operations in the south”, near the Israeli border. The official said the commander “was killed in an Israeli strike targeting his car”.

The Israeli Defence Forces said it struck Hezbollah military sites in Lebanon on Monday, local time, but did not comment on Tawil’s death.

Tawil is the highest-ranking Hezbollah member to be killed since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, said Tawil “directed numerous operations” against Israeli forces since the Gaza war began.

He was also involved in the abduction of Israeli soldiers which triggered the group’s last war with Israel in 2006.

Hamas in a statement expressed “our most sincere condolences for the martyrdom of commander Wissam Tawil, killed … while fulfilling his jihadist duty in support of Gaza”.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military took journalists on a tour of weapons factories and tunnels used by Hamas militants in Gaza to manufacture rockets.

Soldiers said what looked like cement factories and other industrial facilities were in fact used to make missiles and shells stored in deep shafts.

Army spokesman Daniel Hagari held what he said were detonators for rockets capable of hitting targets 100km away.

He told reporters the factory had been built around Salah alDin Road, a major route used to transport humanitarian aid.

The army said it was “the largest weapons production site found since the beginning of the war”. Some of the shafts were 30m deep and the tunnels formed a network that connected throughout Gaza.