Hezbollah chief warns Israel of 'tough retribution' for device blasts

Beirut: Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, admitted on Thursday that the attacks it attributed to Israel had destroyed hundreds of operatives' communication equipment, dealing an "unprecedented" blow to his organisation.

Israel has stated it will expand the scope of its war in Gaza to encompass the Lebanon front, but it has not responded to the strikes that killed 37 people and injured approximately 3,000 people, including children, over the course of two days throughout Lebanon.

Nasrallah took a defiant tone in a speech following the strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday that sent shockwaves through Lebanon, vowing to exact "just punishment" on Israel for the attacks, AFP reported.

Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”

“It could be a war crime or a declaration of war,” he said referring to the attacks, which he called a “massacre.”

Additionally, Nasrallah promised to keep up Hezbollah's resistance against Israel until a cease-fire in Gaza is achieved.

“The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops” despite “all this blood spilt,” he said.

Nasrallah spoke on the assurances made by Israeli authorities to return thousands of Israelis who had been forced from their homes due to gunfire over the border with Lebanon.

“You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north,” he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border.”

Hezbollah is an ally of the Palestinian group Hamas.

Israel had been concentrating its assault on Gaza up to this point. However, since October, gunfire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants has occurred practically daily along Israel's northern border with Lebanon. On the Lebanese side, hundreds of people have died in the conflict, primarily warriors, and dozens on the Israeli side.

As Nasrallah was speaking, Israeli aeroplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut, according to the state-run National News Agency of Lebanon. AFP correspondents in Beirut reported hearing tremendous booms.

The strikes, which analysts and some Israeli media have suggested had all the markings of being carried out by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, have prompted Nasrallah to declare the beginning of an internal investigation.