Hezbollah is burying its top military commander, Haitham Tabatabai, on Monday, a day after Israel killed him in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, while the Israeli occupation army raised alert levels and launched large-scale readiness drills.
The Lebanese movement Hezbollah is holding a funeral on Monday for senior military commander Haitham Ali Tabatabai, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday targeting a residential building in Haret Hreik in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The group has called on its supporters to take part in the procession honoring Tabatabai and two other fighters killed in the same strike.
In consecutive statements, Hezbollah confirmed that four of its members were killed in the attack. A Lebanese security source told Al Jazeera that Tabatabai had assumed the role of Hezbollah’s top military commander following the assassination of Fouad Shukr last year.
The killing marks a significant escalation. No strike of this scale—or involving a figure of Tabatabai’s rank—has targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs since last June, nor since the ceasefire took effect.
🇱🇧 Hezbollah Chief of Staff Abu Ali al-Tabatabai is being prepared for his funeral, which will take place in Beirut at 2:00 p.m. #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/02apuL0Lal
— 🔰 Military-News (@MilitaryNewsEN) November 24, 2025
Following the assassination, Hezbollah’s deputy head of the political council, Mahmoud Qamati, said the movement was considering its options and that “all possibilities are open” in terms of response.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the attack and urged the international community to intervene to halt Israeli strikes in Lebanon, warning that continued escalation risks a wider regional confrontation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed responsibility for the strike, saying Tabatabai was leading Hezbollah’s rearmament efforts and asserting that Israel would “not allow the organization to threaten its security.”
🟥 [#Picture] During the funeral procession of Ali Abu Abbas in Khiam, an Israeli drone dropped leaflets over the mourners and in the town’s airspace, our correspondent in the south reported.
The leaflet read: "Ali Suleiman Abu Abbas worked on establishing Hezbollah’s military… pic.twitter.com/aha3CxprxB
— L'Orient Today (@lorienttoday) August 5, 2025
Tabatabai, born in 1968 to an Iranian father and a Lebanese mother, joined Hezbollah at a young age.
His name first publicly surfaced in 2015 after he survived an Israeli strike in Quneitra, near the occupied Golan Heights. According to the US State Department, he later led Hezbollah’s elite units in both Syria and Yemen, and Washington had placed a reward of up to $5 million for information on his whereabouts.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army launched unannounced large-scale military drills in the eastern Galilee region to simulate wartime conditions and assess operational readiness.
Israeli Army Radio reported that missile defense systems in northern Israel had been placed on high alert.
According to the military spokesperson, the two-day exercise is intended to test high-level decision-making, mobilization procedures, and the deployment of forces across multiple fronts. Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is overseeing the drills, which began with a surprise readiness inspection of the 210th Division responsible for the occupied Golan Heights.
Residents in northern Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights are expected to hear explosions and see increased Israeli air and ground military activity throughout the duration of the maneuvers.
(PC, AJA)
