Hezbol­lah’s act­ing leader vowed Mon­day to keep bat­tling Is­rael and said the Lebanese mil­i­tant group was pre­pared for a long fight even af­ter much of its top com­mand was wiped out, in­clud­ing its leader, Has­san Nas­ral­lah.

Is­raeli strikes have killed Nas­ral­lah and six of his top com­man­ders and of­fi­cials in the last 10 days, and have hit what the mil­i­tary says are thou­sands of mil­i­tant tar­gets across large parts of Lebanon. Over 1,000 peo­ple have been killed in the coun­try in the past two weeks, near­ly a quar­ter of them women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­istry.

Ear­ly Mon­day, an airstrike hit a res­i­den­tial build­ing in cen­tral Beirut, wip­ing out one apart­ment, dam­ag­ing oth­ers, and killing three Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants, as Is­rael ap­peared to send a clear mes­sage that no part of Lebanon is out of bounds.

De­spite the heavy blow Hezbol­lah has suf­fered in re­cent weeks, act­ing leader Naim Kassem said in a tele­vised state­ment that if Is­rael de­cides to launch a ground of­fen­sive, the group’s fight­ers are ready. He said the com­man­ders killed have al­ready been re­placed.

“Is­rael was not able to af­fect our (mil­i­tary) ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” Kassem said in a tele­vised state­ment, the first time any se­nior Hezbol­lah fig­ure has been seen since Nas­ral­lah was killed. “There are deputy com­man­ders and there are re­place­ments in case a com­man­der is wound­ed in any post.”

He added that Hezbol­lah, which fought Is­rael to a stale­mate in their month­long war in 2006, an­tic­i­pat­ed “the bat­tle could be long.”

A found­ing mem­ber of the mil­i­tant group who had been Nas­ral­lah’s long­time deputy, Kassem will re­main in his act­ing po­si­tion un­til the group’s lead­er­ship elects a re­place­ment. The man wide­ly ex­pect­ed to take over the top post is Hashem Safied­dine, a cousin of Nas­ral­lah who over­sees Hezbol­lah’s po­lit­i­cal af­fairs.

Hezbol­lah’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties are un­clear af­ter a se­ries of ma­jor blows

Hezbol­lah has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased its rock­et at­tacks in the past week to sev­er­al hun­dred dai­ly, but most have been in­ter­cept­ed or fall­en in open ar­eas. Sev­er­al peo­ple have been wound­ed in Is­rael. There have been no fa­tal­i­ties since two sol­diers were killed near the bor­der on Sept. 19.

But Hezbol­lah’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties re­main un­clear.

As re­cent­ly as two weeks ago, a strike like Mon­day’s in cen­tral Beirut — out­side of the main ar­eas where Hezbol­lah op­er­ates and next to a busy trans­porta­tion hub nor­mal­ly crowd­ed with bus­es, taxis and vans — would have been seen as a ma­jor es­ca­la­tion and like­ly fol­lowed by a long-range Hezbol­lah strike in­to Is­rael.

But the un­spo­ken rules of the long-run­ning con­flict no longer seem to be in ef­fect.

It’s pos­si­ble that Hezbol­lah is hold­ing back to save re­sources for a big­ger bat­tle, in­clud­ing a threat­ened Is­raeli ground in­va­sion. But the mil­i­tant group might al­so be in dis­ar­ray af­ter Is­raeli in­tel­li­gence ap­par­ent­ly pen­e­trat­ed its high­est lev­els.

De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant, meet­ing with Is­raeli troops on Mon­day, said Is­rael would “use all the ca­pa­bil­i­ties we have,” hint­ing at a ground op­er­a­tion. “You are part of this ef­fort,” he added.

In the past week, Is­rael has fre­quent­ly tar­get­ed Beirut’s south­ern sub­urbs, where Hezbol­lah has a strong pres­ence — in­clud­ing the mas­sive strike on Fri­day that killed Nas­ral­lah — but had not hit lo­ca­tions clos­er to the city cen­ter.

The strike ear­ly Mon­day killed three mem­bers of the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine, a small, left­ist fac­tion that has not been mean­ing­ful­ly in­volved in months of fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah in Lebanon. Is­rael has not claimed the strike but is wide­ly as­sumed to have car­ried it out.

Al­so Mon­day, Hamas an­nounced that its top com­man­der in Lebanon, Fa­tah Sharif, was killed with his fam­i­ly in an airstrike on the Al-Buss refugee camp in the south­ern port city of Tyre. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary con­firmed that it had tar­get­ed him.

The U.N. agency for Pales­tin­ian refugees said Sharif was an em­ploy­ee, and was put on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave with­out pay in March as it in­ves­ti­gat­ed al­le­ga­tions about his po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Is­rael has ac­cused the agency, known as UN­R­WA, of links to Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant groups, while the agency says it is com­mit­ted to neu­tral­i­ty and works to pre­vent any such in­fil­tra­tion.

Hezbol­lah be­gan fir­ing rock­ets, drones and mis­siles in­to north­ern Is­rael af­ter Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack from Gaza in­to Is­rael sparked the war in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry. Hezbol­lah and Hamas are al­lies, and both sup­port­ed by Iran, and Hezbol­lah said it would con­tin­ue the at­tacks in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tini­ans un­til there was a cease-fire in Gaza.

Is­rael re­spond­ed to the rock­ets with airstrikes in Lebanon, where Hezbol­lah is based, and the fight­ing has steadi­ly es­ca­lat­ed over the past year. The Lebanese gov­ern­ment says the fight­ing may have dis­placed up to a mil­lion peo­ple, al­though the U.N. es­ti­mate is around 200,000.

Tens of thou­sands of Is­raelis have al­so been dis­placed. Is­rael has vowed to keep fight­ing un­til the at­tacks stop and its cit­i­zens can re­turn to their homes.

Is­rael shows lit­tle in­ter­est in cease-fire calls as it blood­ies a long­time foe

The Unit­ed States and its al­lies have called for a cease-fire, hop­ing to avoid fur­ther es­ca­la­tion that could draw in Iran and set off a wider war. But Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu has shown lit­tle in­ter­est, as his coun­try racks up mil­i­tary achieve­ments against a long­time foe.

Some Is­raelis broke in­to spon­ta­neous cel­e­bra­tions af­ter Nas­ral­lah’s death was an­nounced. Videos cir­cu­lat­ed of crowds at bars singing a song in He­brew mock­ing him. A news an­chor on a pro-Ne­tanyahu sta­tion sang and danced as the stu­dio au­di­ence joined in with him while a com­men­ta­tor on Is­rael’s largest TV sta­tion of­fered co-pan­el­lists cel­e­bra­to­ry shots.

Lebanese Prime Min­is­ter Na­jib Mikati said the coun­try is com­mit­ted to an im­me­di­ate cease-fire fol­lowed by the de­ploy­ment of Lebanese troops in the south, in keep­ing with a U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion that end­ed the 2006 war but was nev­er ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

Mikati spoke af­ter meet­ing with French For­eign Min­is­ter Jean-Noël Bar­rot. France, which has close ties to Lebanon, has joined the Unit­ed States in call­ing for a cease-fire.

Hezbol­lah, which boasts tens of thou­sands of bat­tle-hard­ened fight­ers and long-range mis­siles ca­pa­ble of hit­ting any­where in­side Is­rael, has long been seen as the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tant group in the re­gion and a key part­ner to Iran in both threat­en­ing and de­ter­ring Is­rael.

But Hezbol­lah has nev­er faced an on­slaught quite like this one, which be­gan with a so­phis­ti­cat­ed at­tack on its pagers and walkie-talkies in mid-Sep­tem­ber that killed dozens of peo­ple and wound­ed around 3,000 — in­clud­ing many fight­ers but al­so many civil­ians. —BEIRUT (AP)

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Sto­ry by AB­BY SEWELL and NA­TAL­IE MELZ­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Melz­er re­port­ed from Tel Aviv, Is­rael. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Bassem Mroue and Ka­reem Chehayeb in Beirut, and Jamey Keat­en in Gene­va, con­tributed re­port­ing.