Top Iranian general killed in Golan strike

Officials in Iran said a general died in Sunday's Golan Heights airstrike, along with six Hezbollah members. In a statement on their website Monday, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards confirmed the death of a general in the attack, widely blamed on - but officially neither confirmed nor denied by - Israel.

"General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi and a number of fighters and Islamic Resistance forces were attacked by the Zionist regime's helicopters," the Revolutionary Guards alleged. "This brave general and some members of Hezbollah were martyred."

The dead include Jihad Mughniyeh - the son of a previously assassinated Hezbollah commander - and Mohammed Issa, responsible for the group's operations in Syria and Iraq. Once solely focused on fighting Israel, Hezbollah - a Lebanon-based Shiite militia backed by Iran - has deeply involved itself in the civil war in Syria, where it backs President Bashar al-Assad. In December, the Assad regime accused Israel of carrying out airstrikes in Syria's capital, Damascus.

'The war ... continues'

On Monday afternoon, thousands gathered in southern Beirut for Mughniyeh's funeral (pictured). The mourners buried him in the same cemetery in the Lebanese capital as his father, Imad, killed in a 2008 car bombing that Hezbollah has also blamed on Israel. As the crowds marched through the streets, residents threw confetti down from their balconies.

Speaking at the funeral, Mahmud Qmati, a member of Hezbollah's political bureau, said all-out conflict remained unlikely, but that "the war of strikes, assassinations and intermittent confrontation continues."

Hezbollah's Al-Manar television reported that strike killed the six members of the group as they carried out reconnaissance. The strike came days after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had threatened to retaliate against Israel for its repeated strikes on targets in Syria and boasted that the movement had grown stronger than ever. He also touted Hezbollah's sophisticated arsenal, including Fateh-110 missiles, which have a range of 200 kilometers (120 miles) - enough to hit much of Israel.

"Let's wait and see," Bilal Farhat, a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, said Monday when asked what might happen next.

Israel occupied parts of Lebanon for 22 years until 2000, and the two countries remain technically at war. In 2006, Israel fought a bloody war against Hezbollah that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and also left more than 160 Israelis dead, about 120 of them soldiers.

mkg/bw (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)