Nearly 400 Hezbollah fighters killed in Gaza conflict

Photo: Hasan Fneich Agence France-Presse Des enfants pleurent un membre de leur famille tué la veille avec un combattant du Hezbollah lors d’une frappe israélienne au Livan, lors de ses funérailles, le 8 août 2024.

Ten months of cross-border violence between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel on the fringes of the Gaza war have killed several hundred fighters from the pro-Iranian movement and caused significant damage on both sides of the border, from which more than 100,000 people have been displaced.

The Lebanese Islamist movement, which has opened what it calls a “support” front for Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has already suffered losses higher than those in its last conflict with Israel in 2006.

Commanders killed

Israeli strikes have killed senior Hezbollah commanders in recent months, including its military leader, Fouad Chokr, targeted on July 30 in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of the movement that has promised to avenge him.

In January, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Al-Radwan unit, Wissam Tawil, was killed in an Israeli strike on his vehicle in southern Lebanon.

Two of the three commanders of the southern Lebanese sectors were also killed: Mohammed Nasser and Taleb Abdallah.

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After the 2006 war, Hezbollah divided the area where it militarily operates in the south into three sectors, each with “an integrated military formation with its own leader, its own personnel, weapons and capabilities,” according to the movement’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

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The region south of the Litani River comprises two sectors, the first, in which the Aziz unit operates, stretches from the sea to the centre of the region where Nasser was in an Israeli strike on 3 July.

The second sector, in which the Nasr unit operates, stretches from the centre of the region to the disputed Shebaa Farms. This unit, whose commander Taleb Abdallah was killed in a similar strike in Jouaiyya on June 11, was the first to bomb Israel on October 8.

The third sector, extending from north of the Litani River to the city of Sidon, is the Badr unit's area of ​​operations.

Israel has repeatedly said it has killed other Hezbollah fighters it has called “commanders.”

Fighters killed

The violence has left at least 570 dead in Lebanon, mostly fighters from Hezbollah and allied groups, including Hamas, but also at least 118 civilians, according to an AFP count.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

Hezbollah has announced the death of more than 370 fighters in Lebanon, according to an AFP count.

Twenty-five others have been killed in neighboring Syria, where Israel has been waging years of strikes against army positions and pro-Iranian fighters, also seeking to cut Hezbollah's supply lines to Lebanon from Tehran.

About 320 of the Hezbollah fighters killed were from southern Lebanon, including about 60 from the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Since late January, more than 230 fighters have been killed. Nearly 70 percent were aged 40 or younger, and six of them were 20 or younger, according to the movement.

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that fewer than 300 of the group's fighters were killed during the Shiite party's 2006 conflict with Israel.