Hezbollah leader says assassination of Hamas leader will not go unpunished

In a televised speech on Wednesday, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah expressed condolences for the martyrdom of Hamas deputy political bureau chief Saleh al-Arouri and five of his comrades killed the day before in a drone strike against their office in the south of Beirut.

Nasrallah called Arouri a "brother" and a "great commander" and said his assassination on Lebanese soil was "a blatant attack" by the Zionist regime.

He said those responsible for Arouri's killing would be punished, pointing to attacks carried out by resistance groups in Palestine and other Arab countries in the region, including Lebanon, against targets controlled by the Israeli regime and its allies.

“This dangerous crime will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he added. Nasrallah said the direct attack to kill Arouri on Dahieh, a southern Beirut suburb where Hezbollah has a foothold, was unprecedented since 2006 when Hezbollah and Israel were engaged in a major war.

He warned, however, that any direct attack on Lebanon would be met with a harsh response in the context of the ongoing conflict in Palestine.

“If the enemy plans to wage war in Lebanon, we will not respect any rules,” the Hezbollah leader said while repeating U.S. officials' warnings to Israeli authorities that a new confrontation with Hezbollah would be costly.

Hezbollah has been engaged in firefights with Israel since early October when the Israeli regime launched a major military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.

Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli targets aim to force the regime to end the aggression that has killed more than 22,000 people in the Gaza Strip. In his remarks on Wednesday, Nasrallah also said Israel was hiding losses suffered in clashes with Hezbollah while calling operations against the Israeli regime "effective."

He also said that neither the Israeli regime nor the United States can achieve any results from the ongoing aggression against Palestine and its operations throughout the region.

“The Americans left the region without achieving any results,” he said, referring to reports that a US Navy destroyer had left regional waters in recent days.