The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group has warned Israel that it will respond swiftly “on the battlefield” to the killing of Hamas’s deputy leader in one of its Beirut strongholds, AFP reports.

“The response is inevitably coming. We cannot remain silent on a violation of this magnitude because it means the whole of Lebanon would be exposed,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

“The decision is now in the hands of the battlefield,” he said in his second speech since the killing of Saleh Al-Aruri.

“Fighters from all areas of the border […] will be the ones responding to the dangerous violation in the suburbs,” he added.