Naim Qassem said that it is bigger than the one in 2006 when Hezbollah went to war with Israel for 34 days, Al Jazeera reported.

Hezbollah held a public funeral in a southern village for five of its fighters killed during the fighting with Israel. It was the first time the Lebanese group held a public funeral since the war intensified in late September.

“My son is in heaven,” said Zeinab al-Haj holding a bag of roses to toss them on the coffin of her son Ali Hijazi during the ceremony in the village of Maarakeh. Hijazi died of wounds suffered in an air strike last week.

Hezbollah’s last public funeral was held on September 27, the same day the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike on a southern Beirut suburb.

“We are people who are proud of their martyrs,” said Hezbollah’s media chief in south Lebanon, Salman H

Meanwhile, two separate Israeli attacks on residential buildings in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya has killed at least 75 people, Gaza’s civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said.

Since the start of the Israeli military incursion in northern Gaza on October 5, at least 2,700 Palestinians have been killed.

Israeli forces started pulling out of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp after a daylong incursion that killed dozens of people.

Israeli Brigadier-General Yisrael Shomer, who heads the military’s operations division, warned “victory” over Hezbollah is a long way off, and the military should be ready to “strike back anywhere” to stop the group from rebuilding.

Israeli forces raided the town of Idhna, west of Hebron, Wafa news agency reports.

Israeli troops stormed the town with military vehicles with “the firing of sound bombs and toxic gas”.

Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank have intensified since the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023. More than 11,000 people have been arrested since the war broke out, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.

In a statement carried by the Palestinian Wafa news agency, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said among the “crimes” being committed against thousands of Palestinian detainees – including Palestinians in Gaza – are torture, starvation, medical negligence and sexual assault.

At least 45 prisoners have been killed while held in Israeli detention since the war on Gaza began in October last year, it said.

According to Addameer, a rights group based in the West Bank city of Ramallah that supports Palestinian prisoners, Israel is currently detaining some 10,200 Palestinians, including 3,443 held under administrative detention, a widely criticised practice that involves holding Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods.Interactive-Prisoners_Palestine_June11_2024