Hezbollah confirms death of top Houthi military adviser in Israeli attack

Hezbollah has confirmed the death of one of its commanders, Adel Ahmar, in Lebanon. 

He was reportedly killed in a strike by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Caliber.Az reports, citing Israeli media.

Ahmar was a high-ranking Hezbollah commander. Until recently, he was the chief military adviser to Yemen's Ansar Allah (Houthis).

To recap, on November 10 evening, Israeli media reported the killing of Salim Jamil Ayyash, the Hezbollah commander responsible for the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister.

Ayyash, who had a $10 million reward from Washington on his head, was a senior member of Hezbollah’s Unit 151 assassination squad, according to the US State Department.

In 2020, Ayyash was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a UN-backed tribunal over the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in a suicide bombing in Beirut in 2005. Then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike in late September, refused to hand him over to the authorities, alongside three other defendants who were eventually acquitted.

Notably, the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which began after a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel in October 2023 that killed over 1,100 people and resulted in more than 200 captives, has led to widespread devastation. Israeli military operations have reportedly resulted in over 43,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza since the escalation began.

By Khagan Isayev