The number two of Hamas, Saleh Al Arouri, died this Tuesday in an Israeli bombing in the south of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, according to reported the Palestinian Islamist movement and two Lebanese security officials.
It is the first time since the start of the war in Gaza that Israel has bombed the Lebanese capital. Clashes between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have so far been limited to border areas in southern Lebanon.
Saleh Al Arouri was killed along with his bodyguards in an attack on the Hamas office in the southern suburb of Beirut, stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, one of the two security sources told AFP.
An AFP photographer saw two floors of the building fly into the air. Ambulances quickly rushed to the area.
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The Lebanese National News Agency (ANN), for its part, announced that “the hostile attack that targeted the Hamas office, where a meeting of Palestinian factions was being held, caused the death of senior Hamas official in the West Bank Saleh al Arouri.”
Hamas also confirmed on Tuesday that its number two had been “killed” in an Israeli bombing in Beirut, according to an announcement broadcast by the media of the Palestinian group, in power in the Gaza Strip.
Border between Israel and Lebanon, where the clashes with Hezbollah had been concentrated.
“Martyrdom of the vice president of the Hamas political bureau, Sheikh Saleh Al Arouri, in a Zionist attack in Beirut,” the group said in a statement broadcast by Al-Aqsa TV, its official channel, and other media.
According to the Lebanese national news agency, At least four people were killed in the bombing, carried out with a drone.
Saleh Al Arouri, accused by Israel of masterminding multiple attacks, was elected deputy to the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in 2017.
After being imprisoned by Israel for nearly 20 years, he was released in 2010 on condition of exile.
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At the moment the identity of the rest of the victims and whether they were also part of the Islamist movement are unknown.
The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah controls most of the neighborhoods south of the capital where the attack took place, area that represents one of its main strongholds in the country and that had not been attacked since the war it waged against Israel in the summer of 2006.
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Since last October 8, within the framework of the war between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah has also been engaged in intense crossfire with Israeli forces from its side of the border, although until now the violence had been limited to a radius of 50 kilometers from the divide.
The border outbreak, the worst in 17 years, has raised fears that Lebanon will become a second front in the Gaza war, scenario for which the Lebanese Government has been preparing for more than two months with an emergency plan at various levels.
AFP and EFE
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