Israel kills top Hamas leader in Beirut
Drone strike risks major escalation in the war as Tel Aviv prepares for retaliation
ISRAEL has assassinated a senior Hamas leader in a Beirut drone strike that threatens a major escalation in the war.
Saleh al-arouri, the deputy leader of Hamas’s political wing and founder of its militant operations in the occupied West Bank, was among seven killed in the blast in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh. He is the most senior member of the terror group to have been eliminated since the Oct 7 attack on Israel.
Hamas killed about 1,140 people in the attack and captured an estimated 240 hostages, with 120 remaining in captivity. Members of the terrorist group raped, carried out sexual violence and mutilated women during the onslaught, according to a BBC report.
A US defence official said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was behind the strike on a Hamas office, in which two other senior members of its militant wing were killed.
The early evening drone strike caused extensive damage to a residential building, blowing out the front of the multi-storey block. Limbs and other pieces of human remains were visible.
Najib al-mikati, Lebanon’s prime minister, said the strike was a “new Israeli crime that definitely aims to bring Lebanon into a new phase of confrontations”. The country plans to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council that the “blatant” Beirut strike is a violation of its sovereignty.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah retaliated hours later, claiming it targeted a group of Israeli soldiers in the village of Marj, close to its capital.
Two IDF personnel were reportedly injured by anti-tank missiles.
Arouri’s death is a “big loss” for Hamas, Gershon Baskin, a former Israeli hostage negotiator, said. “This is especially because he was directly in charge of terrorist actions from the West Bank.”
Israel did not confirm it was behind the attack, which struck an area of the Lebanese capital dominated by the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, a key ally of Hamas. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, said Israel’s military was at a “very high level of readiness” for any retaliation.
Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, said the assassination was a “terrorist act”, a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and an expansion of Israel’s hostility against Palestinians.
“All these assassinations and attacks will make us stronger and more determined than ever. This is the history of the resistance and our movement. We always become stronger and more determined,” he said in a televised speech. Samir Fendi and Azzam al-aqra were the two senior commanders also killed in the strike, he said.
In a statement by its foreign ministry, Iran, which funds both Hezbollah and Hamas, said Arouri’s death would “further ignite resistance against Israel”.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have caused massive disruption to global shipping via the Red Sea, expressed condolences over the killing.
Mark Regev, a senior adviser to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declined an invitation for Israel to deny responsibility for the drone strike but did not condemn it either.
Mr Regev told MSNBC broadcaster: “Whoever did it must be clear – that this was not an attack on the Lebanese state. Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership.”
The US was not informed of the IDF operation ahead of time, the news website Axios reported.
A failure to do so will further fray relations between Jerusalem and Washington, with the Biden administration increasingly perturbed by Israel’s response to Oct 7 and a fear of escalation across the region.
Thousands of Israeli troops have been withdrawn from Gaza, with officials briefing that some will be redeployed to
the northern front on Lebanon’s border. Israeli leaders have been drawing up plans for a war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah across that border, amid daily exchanges of artillery fire.
Hezbollah, one of the most heavily armed non-state militias in the world, poses a potentially greater threat to Israel than Hamas. It has an arsenal of roughly 30,000 advanced missiles.
Though less influential than Hamas’ leaders in Gaza, Arouri, 57, was seen as a key player in the movement, masterminding its operations in the West Bank from exile in Syria, Turkey, Qatar and finally Lebanon after long stints in Israeli prisons.
As the group’s senior official in Lebanon, he played a major role in cementing Hamas’s relations with Hezbollah, and healing ties to Iran.
The US State Department had offered a reward of $5million (£3.9million) for information on Arouri’s whereabouts.
Western intelligence has briefed that Hezbollah and its Iranian backers do not want to provoke a wider regional war that would be difficult for them to sustain. Lebanon is suffering its worst economic crisis in history and Hezbollah knows that there is little support in the country for such a war.
The Israeli military rarely confirms military operations it conducts abroad but is widely believed to have played a part in the killing of senior officials from terror groups abroad in the past.
Danny Danon, a member of the Knesset from the Likud party, praised Israeli security forces for yesterday’s strike.
He said: “I congratulate the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad and the security forces for killing... Salah al-aaruri [sic] in Beirut.”