2024-01-02 18:52:37
The Israeli portal Ynet defined al Arouri as the “architect of the October 7 massacre” perpetrated by a Hamas commando in southern Israel and which ended with the death of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of another 240.
One of the sources said that Al Arouri died along with his bodyguards in an attack on the Hamas office in the southern suburb of Beirut, a stronghold of the Hezbollah movement, backed by Iran and author of the attack on the Argentine Jewish mutual AMIA.
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The television of the Palestinian Islamist group, for its part, reported the “murder” of one of its leaders. The Lebanese government condemned the attack.
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.
After the news spread, Hamas said that al Arouri’s death will not stop the “resistance.” Israel did not admit responsibility for the attack.
How Hamas’ number two died in Beirut
Al Arouri was killed by an Israeli drone bombing an office of the group on the outskirts of Beirut, where a total of six people died, reported the Lebanese National News Agency (ANN), cited by EFE.
“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 and three other people,” the Lebanese state media reported.
A poster of Saleh al Arouri in Gaza City (File photo: AFP)
Hamas television confirmed the incident and said that al Arouri was “killed” in a “cowardly Zionist attack.”
Al Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’s political and military branches, led the group in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him even before the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, the AP reported. He was one of the most prominent exiled leaders of the group, which has several representatives in Lebanon as well as other countries in the region.
Accused by Israel of masterminding multiple attacks, he was elected deputy to the head of Hamas’s 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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Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel said the Palestinian leader was killed following dark in an Israeli drone strike in the Mashrafiyah suburb. Television images showed damaged cars and debris in a vast area in front of a block of buildings, and a fire in the distance.
In December, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant had advanced the possibility of launching an attack in Beirut. “If you hear that we attacked in Beirut, you will understand that (Hezbollah leader Hasan) Nasrallah has crossed the red line,” he said.
Hezbollah has been attacking northern Israel, from southern Lebanon, following the Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli retaliation and invasion of Gaza that caused more than 21,000 deaths, according to the Palestinian Islamic movement.
Hezbollah threatens retaliation once morest Israel
Hezbollah Secretary General Hussein Jashi told Qatari newspaper Al-Arabi Al-Jadid that the Lebanese group “will respond to the assassination.”
”Hezbollah is trying to maintain the rules of the conflict, but Israel is working to widen the problem,” he said.
In turn, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that “the explosion is an Israeli crime intended to lead Lebanon to a new stage of the conflict, following the daily attacks in the south of the country.”
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