A senior commander of a secretive Hezbollah force was killed in an alleged Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Monday, ratcheting up tensions as violence along the border threatened to escalate into all-out war.

Wissam al-Tawil, the deputy head of a unit within the terror group’s elite Radwan force, was killed in the Lebanese town of Majdal Selm when a missile slammed into the SUV he was in, according to Lebanese security sources, in a strike that analysts said represented a significant blow to the Iran-backed group.

The apparent assassination will likely also complicate US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s bid to keep Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip from expanding into a second front, as the top US diplomat makes a whirlwind tour to the region.

Hezbollah confirmed that Tawil was killed, naming him as one of the group’s fighters but provided few other details.

The Israel Defense Forces said fighter jets carried out strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including sites where the terror group’s members were operating, but did not confirm that it had killed Tawil.

Tawil was from Khirbet Selm, which neighbors Majdal Selm, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) from northern Israel.

Lebanese security officials said a second Hezbollah operative in the car with Tawil was killed in the same strike.

Tawil is likely the most senior Hezbollah member killed since hostilities broke out exactly three months ago, as the Lebanese terror group began lobbing rockets, drones and anti-tank missiles at northern Israel in support of Hamas as Israel invaded Gaza following the October 7 massacres in southern Israel.

“This is a very painful strike,” one Lebanese security source said, while another predicted that “things will flare up now.”

Following the announcement of Tawil’s killing, Hezbollah published a series of pictures of Tawil in fatigues and meeting with terror group leader Hassan Nasrallah and assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, among others, signifying his stature among the array of Tehran-backed groups that have stepped up attacks on Israel and US forces in the region in recent months.

Daily exchanges of cross-border fire have appeared to intensify in recent days, after an alleged Israeli strike last week killed a senior Hamas commander living in a Beirut suburb under Hezbollah’s protection.

On Saturday, Hezbollah fired a barrage of more than 40 rockets and several missiles at a sensitive air traffic control base atop Mount Meron, some eight kilometers (5 miles) inside Israel, in one of its largest attacks in years. Two radar domes were hit by anti-tank guided missiles, according to footage published by the terror group. The IDF admitted unspecified damage was caused, without elaborating.

Israel has threatened to go to war against the terror group if the strikes do not halt, with some 80,000 people from northern Israel currently displaced by the fighting, alongside tens of thousands from the south evacuated due to the Hamas onslaught and ensuing war.

“The priority isn’t to get into a war,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in comments published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. But he added that “we are willing to sacrifice… They see what is happening in Gaza. They know we can copy-paste to Beirut.”

The border skirmishes on the border have resulted in four civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of nine IDF soldiers. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

Hezbollah has named 153 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 19 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 19 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.

The terror group has matched Israel’s bellicose threats with its own, while also claiming to not seek war.

“If the enemy thinks of waging a war on Lebanon, we will fight without restraint, without rules, without limits and without restrictions,” Nasrallah said in an address last week marking the anniversary of Soleimani’s slaying.

“Neither side wants a war, but the two sides believe it is inevitable,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Everybody in Israel thinks it’s just a matter of time until we need to change the reality” so that residents of the north can return to their homes, he said.

Hezbollah and Iran-backed sources told Reuters that Israel had also stepped up attacks against the terror group in Syria recently, signaling that tacit arrangements designed to keep tensions from snowballing over the years had been shunted aside by the war.

“They used to fire warning shots – they’d hit near the truck, our guys would get out of the truck, and then they’d hit the truck,” a commander of the Iran-backed alliance said of alleged Israeli raids on arms transfers handled by Hezbollah before October 7.

“Now that’s over. Israel is now unleashing deadlier, more frequent air raids against Iranian arms transfers and air defense systems in Syria. They bomb everyone directly. They bomb to kill.”

The US is still hoping to keep fighting at a low boil, with analysts saying all-out war would devastate both Lebanon and Israel, due to Hezbollah’s vast firepower.

“This is a moment of profound tension for the region. This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and suffering,” Blinken told reporters in Doha on Sunday.

The US diplomat is expected to travel to Israel and the West Bank on Tuesday and Wednesday before wrapping up his trip in Egypt.

Since October 8 — a day after thousands of Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 and kidnapped over 240 in southern Israel — Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the northern border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

The alleged Israeli killing of Hamas terror chief Saleh al-Arouri in the Lebanese capital of Beirut last week sparked further fears of broader conflagration as he was the most high-profile figure to be killed since October 7 and because his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities started.