Hezbollah was mourning its senior commander Haitham Ali Tabatabai on Monday after he was killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The group called him “the great commander” and said he was killed in “a treacherous Israeli attack”.
Mr Tabatabai, 57, is the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed by Israel since the start of a ceasefire in November 2024 that sought to end more than a year of hostilities between the two sides.
He was born in the Bachoura neighbourhood in central Beirut, a residential area that came under heavy Israeli fire throughout the full-scale war last year between Israel and Hezbollah.
Mr Tabatabai "joined the ranks of the Islamic Resistance movement from its founding" and underwent military and leadership training, Hezbollah said.
He took part in military operations against the Israeli army and its collaborators during Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, which lasted from 1982 until 2000. Hezbollah was founded in 1982, emerging as a resistance movement against the Israeli invasion.
Mr Tabatabai played a "field role in confronting the Israeli aggression on Lebanon in 1993 and 1996", Hezbollah said. Israel launched two military operations in southern Lebanon during those years, lasting seven and 17 days, respectively, which killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians.
After the Israelis withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000, Mr Tabatabai became a military commander in the strategic village of Khiam until 2008. There, the group said he "led heroic confrontations" during the July 2006 war, a 34-day armed conflict with Israel.
Khiam, about 6 kilometres from the border, has been the site of some of the most intense fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in previous conflicts.
Mr Tabatabai also played a significant role in founding and developing the Radwan force, Hezbollah's secretive special operations unit. Last year, the force was on the front line during daily cross-border clashes with Israeli forces, before those escalated into full-blown war in September 2024.
During the two-month war, Mr Tabatabai was among the most senior commanders overseeing the group's military operations.
Hezbollah was significantly weakened in the fighting, with most of its leadership assassinated, including leader Hassan Nasrallah. The group is now under pressure to disarm as part of a ceasefire agreement with Israel that came into effect last November.
Israel has been attacking Lebanon on a near-daily basis since then, with more than 100 civilians killed as a result, the UN estimates. However, strikes on Beirut are less common. The attack on Sunday was the first since early June, when Israel claimed it was striking Hezbollah drone factories.
Last week, current Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a televised speech that the group was committed to the ceasefire, to which there was “no alternative”.
But Israel's strike on Beirut that killed Mr Tabatabai and four others has crossed a "red line", Hezbollah official Mahmoud Qmati said on Sunday, as he stood near the bombed-out building. Hezbollah's leadership will decide on how the group will respond, he added.
