Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri killed in alleged Israeli strike in Beirut
Israel mum on blast at Hamas office in Dahiyeh suburb said to kill 7 including terror chief; all eyes on Hezbollah, which said it would respond to any targeting of Hamas in Lebanon
Hamas’s deputy leader abroad Saleh al-Arouri, wanted for years by Israel and seen as the group’s prime orchestrator of West Bank terrorism, was killed Tuesday evening in an Israeli strike in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, officials with Hamas and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah said.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the blast was carried out by an Israeli drone.
Israeli officials declined to comment. Unnamed US officials told the New York Times and Washington Post that Israel was responsible.
The explosion shook the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, which are a stronghold of Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. The explosion caused a fire on Hadi Nasrallah Street, south of Beirut.
Hamas confirmed that seven people in total were killed in the explosion, a precision strike on a third-floor apartment said to serve as an office for the terror group. The others besides Arouri were identified as military commanders Samir Findi and Azzam Al-Aqraa, along with Hamas figures Mahmoud Shaheen, Muhammad Bashasha, Muhammad al-Rayes and Ahmed Hammoud.
According to reports, Findi oversaw Hamas military activities in Lebanon — including the firing of rockets at Israel — and was considered the terror group’s point man with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Al-Aqraa reportedly orchestrated terror activities in the West Bank from overseas.
Israel has vowed to target all leaders of Hamas after the terror group’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw the abduction of over 240 others.
If Israel is behind the attack it could mark an escalation in the regional conflict. Hezbollah has been carrying out attacks against Israel’s north since the war in Gaza began, citing support for Hamas, leading to limited but daily clashes along the border amid concerns of a larger war.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to retaliate against any Israeli targeting of Palestinian officials in Lebanon. Arouri was regarded as close to Nasrallah, and was reportedly scheduled to meet with the Hezbollah leader on Wednesday.
Based in Lebanon, Arouri, 57, was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, deputy head of the terror group’s political bureau and considered the de facto leader of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank, though he has long resided elsewhere. He was regarded as the most notorious Hamas figure in orchestrating West Bank terrorism against Israel.
“The cowardly assassinations carried out by the Zionist occupation against the leaders and symbols of our Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness of our people or in undermining the continuation of their valiant resistance,” senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq said in a statement, claiming that the strike “proves once again the abject failure of the enemy to achieve any of its aggressive goals in the Gaza Strip.”
The Ramallah branch of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party announced a general strike for Wednesday in response to the deadly strike.
MK Danny Danon (Likud) tweeted on X that he congratulated “the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad and all security forces” for Arouri’s killing. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also tweeted, though more ambivalently, quoting the Book of Judges: “So let all thine enemies perish.”
Channel 12 reported that cabinet secretary Yossi Fuchs sent a directive to ministers ordering them not to speak publicly about the alleged Israeli strike. Neither Danon nor Smotrich deleted their tweets, however.
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