The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs a day earlier, the first attack near the Lebanese capital since a U.S.-mediated cease-fire took effect last month.
The attack, which risked further destabilizing an already tenuous truce, targeted the commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan force, the group’s elite commando unit, the Israeli military said. Hezbollah has not yet commented on the strike, which hit an apartment building in the Dahiya, the densely populated residential and commercial area where the Iran-backed group holds sway.
Despite the declared cease-fire, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange daily attacks in southern Lebanon. Every escalation raises the specter that the truce, which sharply reduced the scale of fighting, will collapse and full-fledged war will return.
“This is how we act, and this is how we will continue to act,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the country’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement on Wednesday announcing the strike.
The Trump administration pushed for the cease-fire in Lebanon to preserve a fragile diplomatic track with Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer.
The timing of the strike near Beirut was especially delicate. Envoys from Israel and Lebanon, whose government does not control Hezbollah, are scheduled to hold another round of U.S.-brokered talks in Washington next Thursday and Friday, according to the State Department, as the Trump administration attempts to turn the cease-fire into a more durable arrangement.
The attack also came amid signs that diplomacy between the United States and Iran could be gaining momentum, with Tehran reviewing an American proposal to end the war. A renewed escalation in Lebanon could complicate that effort, given Iran’s demands for an end to Israeli strikes there. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the strike in Lebanon had been coordinated with the United States.
Until Wednesday, Beirut and its southern suburbs had been spared Israeli attacks since April 8, when Israel unleashed a devastating wave of strikes across the country, including on the Lebanese capital. Those attacks killed more than 350 people, according to the Lebanese authorities, making it the deadliest single day of the latest in a series of wars between Israel and Hezbollah.
That war erupted in March, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, days after the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran began. Israel answered Hezbollah’s attacks with a large-scale bombing campaign in Lebanon and a ground invasion of the country’s south, where its forces still control a broad swath of territory.
More than 2,700 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry, and at its peak, the fighting displaced more than a million others, about a fifth of Lebanon’s population.
Israel has reported 18 military personnel and two civilians killed, and the continued firing has kept northern Israel on edge and left Mr. Netanyahu under pressure at home to show that the war has restored security along the border. Israel says its six-mile-deep “forward defense line” in Lebanon is needed to protect its northern communities, but Hezbollah has cited the continued occupation to justify attacks on Israeli forces during the cease-fire.
Hezbollah has increasingly turned to explosive fiber-optic drones, a low-cost weapon first widely used in Ukraine and now spreading to other battlefields. Guided by thin cables instead of radio signals, the drones are difficult for Israel to jam, and Israeli officials say they have become a persistent threat to troops in southern Lebanon.
The Hezbollah commander killed in the strike on Wednesday was identified by the Israeli military as Ahmed Ali Balout. The Radwan force he headed has been a longtime focus of Israeli military planning. His killing would be Israel’s most significant attack on Hezbollah’s command structure since the cease-fire took effect.
With Hezbollah yet to comment on the strike, it was unclear whether the group would respond or how much firepower it could still bring to bear after two grinding rounds of war with Israel in two years. But the prospect of retaliation prompted some communities in northern Israel to take precautions.
Nahariya, a coastal city that sustained frequent rocket fire in previous rounds of fighting with Hezbollah, canceled outdoor events planned for Thursday and Friday, citing the risk of escalation. Residents in a cluster of border villages were also told to avoid unnecessary gatherings and remain vigilant.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah launched several rockets on Thursday toward troops operating in southern Lebanon, the latest in a string of tit-for-tat attacks that has persisted despite the cease-fire.
It was unclear whether the barrage was routine, retaliation for Mr. Balout’s killing or a sign that the next round of escalation had already begun.
Michael Crowley and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
