Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has said that five of its fighters, including the son of a senior lawmaker, had been killed, amid skirmishes at the Israel-Lebanon border since the Israel-Hamas conflict began, AFP reports.

Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Mohammed Raad, was “martyred on the road to Jerusalem”, the group said in a statement. It issued separate statements with the identities and photographs of four other fighters who were also killed.

A source close to the family, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP that Abbas Raad “was killed with a number of other Hezbollah members” in an Israeli strike Wednesday on a house in south Lebanon’s Beit Yahun.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said Wednesday that “an air strike launched by the Israeli enemy… on a house in Beit Yahun killed four people”. It did not identify the victims.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who visited Beirut on Wednesday, warned in an interview that if the Hamas-Israel ceasefire begins but “does not continue… the conditions in the region will not remain the same as before the ceasefire and the scope of the war will expand”.

 Smoke billows above buildings after an Israeli strike on the outskirts of Damascus on Nov 22, 2023. — AFP
Smoke billows above buildings after an Israeli strike on the outskirts of Damascus on Nov 22, 2023. — AFP

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