Airstrike deals serious blow to Hezbollah

Hezbollah buried its fighters killed the day before in what it said was an Israeli airstrike in Syria as Tehran announced that an Iranian general also died with the six members of the Lebanese Shi’ite group.

The purported airstrike — neither confirmed nor denied by Israel — was a serious blow to Hezbollah, stretched thin and neck-deep in Syria’s civil war where the group’s Shi’ite fighters are battling alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces, and could further ratchet up tensions in the Middle East.

Among the six fighters killed was the son of a slain Hezbollah military chief — the group’s most prominent figure to die so far in the conflict next door.