Beirut air strike kills Hamas deputy leader

The explosion was reportedly caused by an Israeli drone and killed Saleh al-Aruri and other members of the Palestinian group in Lebanon. Incident worsens tensions after almost three months of aggression along the border with Israel. An air strike hit a Hamas office in a suburb of Beirut this Tuesday (02/01), killing one of the main leaders of the radical Palestinian group. The origin of the attack was attributed by the Lebanese press to an Israeli drone. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not comment.

Hamas and the television station of the Lebanese radical Islamist group Hisbolá reported that Saleh al-Aruri, deputy leader of Hamas in the country, was killed. He controlled Hamas' presence in the West Bank.

In the first hours after the incident, reports in the Lebanese press said that, in total, four to six people had been killed in the attack.

Sources from Lebanon's security services cited by the AFP news agency reported that Aruri was with his bodyguards at the time of the attack, and that two floors of the Hamas headquarters were hit, as well as a car.

Hamas and Hezbollah are classified as terrorist organizations by several Western countries, such as Germany and the United States.

The strong explosion in the suburb of Beirut that surprised Hezbollah in its own stronghold came after almost three months of aggression between the Lebanese group and Israel, in a strip of a few kilometers along the border between Israel and Lebanon, but the Israeli Air Force has already had previously hit targets in the interior of the neighboring country.

Hours before the attack in Beirut, Hezbollah announced that its fighters had carried out a series of attacks on military targets on the Israeli side. Aruri's death occurred on the eve of a speech by Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, scheduled for this Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already threatened to kill Aruri even before the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. Since the start of the conflict, more than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Border tensions

Since the start of the conflict in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes and bombings have killed more than 100 Hisbolah fighters and more than 20 civilians, including children, elderly people and several journalists, according to information from the Lebanese Islamist group.

Hamas said in a statement that the death of its deputy leader in Lebanon “will not harm the valiant resistance” in the Palestinian enclave. “This proves once again the absolute failure of the enemy to achieve any of its aggressive objectives in the Gaza Strip,” the group said in the statement.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Israeli aggression in Beirut. In a statement, he stated that the attack aims to “attract Lebanon into a new phase of confrontations” with Israel, dragging the country ever closer to the conflict in Gaza.

This Tuesday, Israel said its soldiers killed “dozens of terrorists” including some carrying explosives, as well as attacking a weapons depot in the city of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, where they found dozens of rocket launchers and tunnels.

The medical NGO Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that its hospital in Khan Yunis was hit twice this Tuesday, leaving five dead and three injured among people who had been forced to leave their places of residence and who sought shelter there.

rc/bl (AFP, AP, Reuters)