The New York Times reported how for the second time in less than two months, Israel was able to locate and kill a senior Hezbollah military figure while he was holding a secret meeting with his comrades in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. In the days leading up to his assassination, Israel disabled hundreds, if not thousands, of the group’s rank-and-file members by blowing up their pagers and walkie-talkies.

Hezbollah has so far responded with calls for retaliation and routinely fires rockets into northern Israel.

The assassination of senior military commander Ibrahim Akil on Friday capped a week that threw Lebanon’s most sophisticated political and military forces into deep chaos and appeared to herald a stark shift in the calculus that has long governed the decades-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

“Since the two powers fought an effective war against each other until it came to a devastating halt in 2006, Israel and Hezbollah have been preparing for the next major confrontation, nurturing a state of mutual deterrence that has prevented intermittent clashes along the Lebanese-Israeli border from escalating into another major war,” the paper says.

By all assessments, the Israelis feared that a new conflict would involve Hezbollah targeting sensitive infrastructure inside Israel and allowing Hezbollah’s well-trained commandos to penetrate northern Israeli towns. Hezbollah also knew that the Israeli air force could quickly cause widespread destruction in Lebanon, especially in the communities from which the group draws its support.

But last week, Israeli leaders apparently decided that pushing the envelope was worth the risk and crossed what had been unofficially considered red lines. So far, it seems to have worked for Israel.

“Eighteen years of mutual deterrence have now given way to a new phase of unilateral Israeli supremacy,” Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, told the paper. “The façade that Hezbollah presented to the world as an impenetrable organization has been shattered, and Israel has brilliantly demonstrated how much of an advantage it has in this equation vis-à-vis Hezbollah.”

Both Israel and Hezbollah confirmed the death of Ibrahim Aqil, who Israel described as the leader of Hezbollah's elite combat unit, in the airstrike on Friday. The Israeli military said about 10 others from the Radwan force were also killed, but did not identify them.

The strike, which targeted a densely populated area south of Beirut known as Dahiyeh, brought down two eight-story buildings and sparked panic across the Lebanese capital.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said Saturday that the death toll from the strike had risen to 31, including three children, and 68 wounded. Lebanese families have since shared images of missing relatives on social media. Some of the missing were children.

Friday’s Hezbollah strike follows 11 months of tit-for-tat attacks between Hezbollah and Israel across the Lebanese-Israeli border that have killed people on both sides and forced some 150,000 people to flee their homes. Hezbollah began launching attacks into northern Israel after the war in Gaza began last October, saying it was seeking to cripple Israeli forces in support of Hamas, its ally in Gaza.