Funeral Held for Slain Hezbollah Commander

Mourners in Beirut attended the funeral of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital.

People waved flags and held images of the slain commander, as his coffin was carried in the procession by members.

It was the most serious blow to the group in nearly two decades and threatened to push the tit-for-tat exchanges across Lebanon's southern border in parallel with the Gaza War into a full-blown regional conflict.

Lebanese Hezbollah's head, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed to respond to Israel's killing of the group's top military commander, saying its decades-old foe had "crossed red lines."

Speaking in a televised address to mark the funeral of the slain commander, Nasrallah said the conflict had entered "a new phase unlike the previous one" and that Israel had crossed red lines with its attack on the group's stronghold.

"These are no longer fronts, this is an open battle on all fronts and it has entered a new phase," Nasrallah added in a threat to Israel.

Nasrallah said unnamed countries had asked his group to retaliate in an "acceptable" way - or not at all. But he said it would be "impossible" for the group not to respond.

He said the group had ratcheted down its operations over the last two days out of respect for the victims of the strike but would "go back to work normally starting tomorrow morning," although the retaliation for Shukr's killing would come later.

"Regardless of who you have killed, regardless of what you have destroyed, or declared war here and there, and went to the furthest limits, and crossed all the red lines, regardless of what we do, there will be no solution but to stop the aggression on Gaza," he said.

An Israeli strike on Hezbollah's stronghold in the southern suburb of Beirut killed top commander Fuad Shukr, along with an Iranian military advisor and five civilians.