BEIRUT — Lebanon's Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri was allegedly aware "in advance of the nature of [Hezbollah's] response, though he did not necessarily know the timing. He focused on studying its repercussions to ensure it did not expand the front against Lebanon," Al-Anbaa, a Kuwaiti newspaper, reported Tuesday, citing an anonymous "senior Lebanese official."

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched its long-awaited retaliation against Israel in response to the assassination of one of the party’s top military leaders, Fouad Shukur, on July 30, in Haret Hreik, a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs.

The strike killed Shukur, an advisor from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, three women and two children and injured at least 80 people. Israel claimed the strike was in response to the killing of 12 children in the village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights which it blamed on Hezbollah — a charge that the party strongly denied.

The official added to Al-Anbaa that "Hezbollah's leadership considered the interests of major segments of the Lebanese population, particularly the resistance's (Hezbollah's) supporters, by avoiding displacing them from their homes in Beirut and its southern suburbs. They also aimed to prevent harm to Lebanese in other regions far from the south."

After the retaliation Sunday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah urged residents of the south and Beirut's southern suburbs who had left in fear of an escalation to "head back to their homes." 

The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon, which began ten months ago on Oct. 8, a day after the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation by Hamas against Israel, has displaced over 110,000 people, according to an Aug. 13 report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The organization estimates that $110 million is needed to meet the needs of those affected by the ongoing violence.

A spokesperson to Berri declined to comment on the matter to L'Orient Today.