BEIRUT (AFP) – An Israeli strike in Lebanon killed Hamas’s deputy leader, the group and security officials in the country said.
A high-level security official told AFP that Saleh al-Aruri was killed along with his bodyguards in the strike by Israel, which vowed to destroy Hamas.
Israel has previously announced the killing in Gaza of Hamas commanders and officials during the war, but Aruri is the most high-profile figure to be killed, and his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari did not directly comment on Aruri’s killing but said the military was “highly prepared for any scenario” in its aftermath.
A second security official in Lebanon confirmed the information about Aruri’s killing.
Lebanese state media reported the strike hit a Hamas office in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally.
Hamas TV also said Israel had killed Aruri in Lebanon, and Lebanese media reported a total of seven people were killed in the attack by an Israeli drone.
The strike adds to widespread fears that the nearly three-month-old Israel-Hamas war could become a wider regional conflagration.
Hamas said the killing would not lead to its defeat, while Hezbollah vowed Aruri’s death would not go “unpunished”. Hezbollah called it “a serious assault on Lebanon… and a dangerous development in the course of the war.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the killing and said it “aims to draw Lebanon” further into the Hamas-Israel war.
In a call with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz after the strike, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Israel to “avoid any escalatory attitude, particularly in Lebanon”.
Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground offensive has killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
In the occupied West Bank, violence since October 7 has surged to a level unseen in nearly two decades. At least 321 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers since the Gaza war began, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
AFPTV images showed scores of people in the streets of Ramallah to protest Aruri’s killing, which Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh condemned.
Shtayyeh also warned about the “risks and consequences that could follow”, his office said.
The hostilities along the Israeli-Lebanese border have fanned fears of a wider conflict, as have Israel’s occasional strikes inside Syrian territory, where Hezbollah also operates.
A strike inside Syria last month that was blamed on Israel killed a senior commander of the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who claim to be operating in support of Hamas, have also launched attacks at Israel and against cargo ships in the Red Sea, where the US military has assembled a multinational task force to protect the vital shipping lane.
Turkey, whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has harshly criticised Netanyahu over the war, announced the detention of 34 people suspected of planning abductions and spying on behalf of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.
Erdogan weeks ago warned of “serious consequences” should Israel attempt to target Hamas figures living or working in Turkey.
