BEIRUT, Lebanon
Senior Hamas official Saleh Al-Arouri was among at least six people killed on Tuesday night in a suspected Israeli drone strike in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh.
Arouri, 57, was a member of
the militant group’s politburo and one of the founders of its military wing,
the Qassam Brigades. Last year the US offered a $5 million reward for
information about him.
A Lebanese security source
told Arab News the drone strike had targeted a three-storey building in the
Haret Hreik neighborhood that had Hamas offices on the second and third floors.
“There is no building built above it, so it was easy to target from the air,”
the source said.
Leaders of Hamas’ armed
wing Al-Qassam Brigades, Samir Findi Abu Amer and Azzam Al-Aqraa Abu Ammar,
were also killed in the Israeli strike, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV
channel said on Telegram.
A security cordon was set up
around the scene of the attack, while ambulances rushed to transport the
injured to hospital.
After the blast firefighters
and paramedics gathered around the building, which had a gaping hole in the
third floor. Limbs and other pieces of flesh were visible on the roadside.
After the attack, Israel’s
army said its forces were “in a high state of readiness for any scenario.”
“The IDF is at a very high
level of readiness, in all arenas, in defense and offense. We are in a high
state of readiness for any scenario,” Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Adm.
Daniel Hagari said at a press conference.
“The most important thing to
say tonight is that we are focused and remain focused on fighting Hamas,”
Hagari said.
A US defense official,
speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations, said
the Israel Defense Forces was responsible for the strike targeting Al-Arouri
and that an assessment of whether he had been killed was ongoing, the Washington
Post reported.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime
Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack as a “new Israeli crime” and said it
was an attempt to pull Lebanon into the Gaza war.
The Israeli military refused
to comment, but Mark Regev, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
said: “Whoever did it, it must be clear: this was not an attack on the Lebanese
state. Whoever did this carried out a surgical strike against the Hamas
leadership.”
Dahiyeh, where the attack took
place, is a Hezbollah stronghold. Palestinian political analyst Hisham Debsi
said Arouri had been “living in Lebanon for some time under the protection of
Hezbollah, and launched joint operations against Israel from Beirut.”
His death was “a challenge to
Hezbollah and puts the party in a dilemma,” Debsi said. “The party’s security
has been violated, despite all the measures taken, it is no longer an
impregnable fortress and Israel can attack whoever it wants.”
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