A senior military leader of pro-Iranian Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Monday, amid fears of a regional conflagration, a Lebanese security official told AFP.

The man “played an important role in directing military operations in the south of the country,” from where Lebanon’s Hezbollah has launched almost daily attacks on Israel for three months, which has bombed Israel in return, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He was killed “by an Israeli strike on his car in the village of Herbet Selm, about ten kilometers from the border with Israel,” he added.

In the afternoon, Hezbollah announced the death of “Commander Wissam Hasan Tawil”, killed in action.

He was the most senior Hezbollah military official to be killed since the powerful group opened a front with Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.

The group posted several photos of Wissam Tawil online, including one with Qassem Soleimani, the former architect of Iran’s military operations in the Middle East, who was killed in a January 2020 US strike in Iraq.

He also appears alongside Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and Imad Moghniyeh, a senior military official killed in Damascus in 2008.

Another photo shows him with Mustafa Badreddin, another Shiite military leader killed in 2016 and named as the “mastermind” of the attack on former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Among other things, “Hezbollah” praised its participation in the capture of Israeli soldiers, which provoked the war against Israel in the summer of 2006, as well as “specific operations that it carried out in Syria.”

The group also said it had “carried out numerous operations” against Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Lebanese border since October 7, 2023.