Hezbollah threatens widespread Israeli attacks

Islamic militants used the funeral of one of the world’s most wanted terrorists to threaten all-out war on Israel today.

Hezbollah’s leader threatened to retaliate against Israeli targets abroad after accusing it of assassinating militant commander Imad Mughniyeh with a car bomb in Syria.

Israel denies any involvement in the attack on Mughniyeh, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and had a $25m (€14m) US government bounty on his head.

“You have killed Hajj Imad outside the natural battlefield,” Hassan Nasrallah said, referring to his group’s claim that it only fights Israel within Lebanon and along its border..

“You have crossed the borders,” Nasrallah said in the eulogy at the funeral of Mughniyeh in south Beirut. “With this murder, its timing, location and method – Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open.”

“Like all human beings we have a sacred right to defend ourselves,” he said, speaking in a videotaped message broadcast over a giant screen at the ceremony in a Hezbollah stronghold. “We will do all that takes to defend our country and people.”

Nasrallah went into hiding in 2006, fearing an Israeli assassination and making only three appearances since the summer war that year with Israel.

Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in Damascus on Tuesday.

Nasrallah warned that Israel’s killing of Mughniyeh was a “very big folly” which Israel will eventually pay for it.

“Mughniyeh’s blood will lead to the elimination of Israel. These words are not an emotional reaction,” he said, drawing roars from the crowd which raised fists into the air.

He said the killing did not weaken his organisation, but rather was a “incentive.” Mughniyeh left behind “tens of thousands” of guerrillas “fully ready” to fight Israel, Nasrallah said, maintaining that the 2006 war with the Jewish state has not ended.

Soon after he finished speaking, volleys of celebratory gunfire echoed around the city’s southern suburbs

Meanwhile in Iraq radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave his condolences over Mughniyeh’s death.

Al-Sadr called Mughniyeh the “martyr of the Islamic resistance” and declared a three-day mourning period in Iraq.

“We extend our condolences to our beloved resistance in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine and we pray for them to liberate their countries,” he said.