Hezbollah Vows to Step Up Attacks on Israel After Senior Commander Killed, US Urges De-escalation

JAKARTA - The United States has urged Hezbollah and Israel to exercise restraint to prevent the conflict on the Lebanon-Israel border from escalating, as the Lebanese militant group vowed to avenge the death of one of its senior field commanders.

Washington has urged that tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border be lowered, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raising the issue in a telephone call with his Israeli counterpart.

"We do not want to see a wider regional conflict and we want to see a de-escalation of tensions in the region," Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told a news conference, as reported by Reuters on June 13.

Earlier, Hezbollah launched its largest salvo of rockets ever into Israeli territory in a single day on Wednesday, in retaliation after an Israeli strike killed one of the group's senior field commanders.

An Israeli strike in the southern Lebanese village of Jouaiyya on Tuesday night killed Taleb Sami Abdullah (55), Hezbollah's highest-ranking official during the eight-month crisis, as well as three other Hezbollah fighters, with Israel claiming the strike targeted a Taliban command and control center.

Hezbollah mourned Abdullah's death. The funeral procession took place in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with Abdullah's coffin draped in the Hezbollah flag.

"Our response to the martyrdom of Taleb Sami Abdullah is that we will intensify our operations in terms of destructiveness, quantity and quality and the enemy must wait for us on the battlefield," Hezbollah Executive Council Chief Sayyed Hashem Safi Al-Din said at the funeral, according to Arab News.

"If the Israeli army is already crying and groaning because of what has happened to it in northern Palestine, they must be prepared to cry and wail," he stressed.

Hezbollah responded by targeting military sites deep inside Israel, with a salvo of rockets reaching Tiberias for the first time. Israeli army radio estimated that "during the day, 170 shells and rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel."

"This is the first time that alarm sirens have sounded in Tiberias since October," Israeli army radio said.