Hezbollah has suffered some of the heaviest losses in its history over the past two weeks, chief among them the killing of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli airstrike.

Two weeks ago, thousands of communications devices used by Hezbollah members exploded, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000 in an apparent remotely detonated attack that Hezbollah blamed on Israel.

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The Lebanese militant group has lost nearly 500 fighters since it started attacking Israeli military posts in support of its ally, Hamas, last October. And hundreds more were likely killed in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon over the past week, which has killed a number of high-ranking commanders and officials.

Where Hezbollah stands after its recent losses

Still, Hezbollah has continued to launch rockets at central Israel. The group’s chief spokesman, Mohammed Afif, warned on Tuesday (October 1, 2024) that those attacks were only the beginning and that the militant group is waiting for invading forces to enter Lebanon to confront them.

Iran, which backs Hezbollah, fired dozens of missiles into Israel on Tuesday (October 1, 2024) and referenced Nasrallah’s death in a statement on state television claiming responsibility for the attack. The bombardment came a day after Israel said it had begun limited ground operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s tens of thousands of fighters have been battle-hardened in regional conflicts, including in Syria, where the militant group helped tip the balance of power in the 13-year conflict in favour of President Bashar Assad.

Hezbollah has five main units, each consisting of several thousand fighters.

The Nasr and Aziz units are deployed in areas bordering Israel, with Nasr controlling the south-eastern region including the edge of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. The Aziz unit is deployed in the southwest, including along the Mediterranean coast. Nasr and Aziz commanders were killed in Israeli airstrikes earlier this year but were believed to have been replaced.

The Badr unit is deployed in an area that includes Apple province, a mountainous region overlooking large parts of southern Lebanon that has been a Hezbollah stronghold since the late 1980s. The Haidar unit is in the eastern Bekaa Valley while the Dahiyeh unit is in Beirut’s heavily populated southern suburb that housed the group’s headquarters where Nasrallah was killed Friday.

The group also has the elite Radwan Force of several thousand fighters, part of which is deployed along the border with Israel. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said in a report Monday that invading Israeli troops will get to know the experienced fighters of Radwan Force if they decide to launch a ground invasion.

In recent weeks, Hezbollah has lost some of its most experienced military commanders, including Ibrahim Akil, who was in charge of the Radwan Force, and Ibrahim Kobbeisi, who was the group’s missiles commander.

The commander of Hezbollah’s drones unit, Mohammed Surour, and the commander of Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon, Ali Karaki, were also killed in air strikes.

In late July, Israel killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fouad Shukur.

Among the group’s commanders who are still active is Talal Hamieh, who is in charge of Hezbollah’s external operations, and Khodor Nader, who heads the group’s security unit. Hezbollah denied Israeli statements that claimed to have killed senior military commander known as Abu Ali Rida, commander of the Badr unit.

The group’s strongman, Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s maternal cousin, is also alive and widely expected to replace Nasrallah as Hezbollah secretary-general. Safieddine is close to Iran and his son, Rida, is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of an Iranian general who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2020.

Hezbollah has an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles as well as surveillance and explosive drones of different types.

Over the past year, Hezbollah has used a small type of guided missile known as Almas, or Diamond, as well as short-range Falaq and Burkan rockets from areas several kilometers (miles) from the border. Over the past week, Hezbollah introduced the middle-range Fadi rockets, attacking the outskirts of Tel Aviv and the northern city of Haifa.

Hezbollah has yet to use all the weapons it is believed to possess, including its precision-guided missiles and surface-to-sea missiles such as the Russian-made Yakhont.

Israeli officials say its bombardment of large swaths of Lebanon over the past week aimed to take out Hezbollah’s supplies of weapons. However, since the escalation began, Hezbollah has continued to launch attacks across the border and even unveiled new types of weapons.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired middle-range Fadi-4 rockets toward the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Hours later, the group said it fired similar rockets toward an air base in a Tel Aviv suburb. The group has used surface-to-air missiles and shot down or chased off Israeli drones on several occasions — including in the past week.

Most of the incoming fire has either been intercepted or landed in open areas. But Israeli military officials warn that the country’s air defenses are not hermetic.

Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Lebanon said 23 people were killed and dozens injured in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Wednesday (September 25, 2024), the third day of major Israeli raids in the country as fighting with Hezbollah has intensified.

Hezbollah earlier said it had fired a ballistic missile that reached the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time before being intercepted.

The attacks in Lebanon included two rare strikes on the villages of Joun and Maaysra — mountain areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in the country’s south and east.

Fatima from Maaysra, declining to provide her surname, said the targeted two-storey building was her relative’s home and housed people displaced from south Lebanon.

“They bombed an area full of displaced people,” she said. “Nowhere is safe anymore.”

An AFP correspondents at the site of the strike saw rescuers searching for survivors in the rubble of the targeted building and listening for any signs of life under the wreckage.

The village was filled with Hezbollah and Lebanese flags, he said.

Israel’s army later said it was conducting strikes in the Nabatiyeh region of south Lebanon, with the state-run National News Agency reporting an Israeli strike had partly damaged a hospital there.

Nabatiyeh Governor Howaida Turk told AFP that the region’s “only government hospital sustained damage as a result of the nearby strike”, adding that no one had been injured.

Escalating clashes

The Health Ministry said the Israeli strike on the village of Joun in the Chouf mountains, southeast of Beirut, killed four people.

Another Israeli strike killed three people in Maaysra — a Shiite-majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area about 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Beirut.

Nine people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south and seven in eastern Lebanon, the ministry said.

Longtime foes Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking war in Gaza.

The focus of Israel’s firepower has shifted sharply from Gaza to Lebanon in recent days.

On Monday, Israel launched devastating strikes across Lebanon’s south and east, killing more than 550 people according to the health ministry — the deadliest single-day toll since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The attacks came after coordinated explosions of communication devices killed 39 people and wounded thousands on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.

Those were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil among the dead.