Five high-level Hezbollah officials were killed yesterday in a missile strike in the Syrian Golan, close to the Israeli border. Lebanese media said Israel had carried out the attack, and cited Hezbollah sources as vowing to revenge their deaths.

One of the dead operatives is Jihad Mughniya, the son of former top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniya, who was killed in a blast in 2008 that was widely attributed to Israel. According to Western and Israeli intelligence, Mughniya junior led a Hezbollah terror cell near the Israeli border and was planning a large-scale terror attack against it. He is credited with carrying out several cross-border strikes against Israeli forces in the Golan Heights.

Hezbollah officials told the Lebanese media today that retaliation against Israel was “inevitable.” Last week, the organization’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview that his troops are constantly ready to fight against Israel, despite their deep involvement in the Syrian civil war, doing President Bashar al-Assad’s bidding. He said that when a conflict with Israel breaks out, Hezbollah is preparing a territorial invasion of Israel. Despite that, Israeli defense sources estimated that Hezbollah’s retaliation will not be imminent.