2024-08-21 12:18:13
A Palestinian Fatah official was killed in an Israeli strike on Wednesday in the southern Lebanese city of Saida, the head of the Palestinian organization and a Lebanese security source said. The Israeli army confirmed that it had targeted the leader of the armed wing of Fatah Palestine in Lebanon.
This is the first time, since the cross-border exchange of fire began a little more than ten months ago, that the person responsible for training Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been killed.
One of the leaders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades, a part of Fatah
Khalil Maqdah, the leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, “was targeted by the Israeli attack on Saida,” said senior Fatah official Fathi Abou Al-Aradat. A Lebanese security source said the strike targeted his car as he was driving near Palestinian camps near Saida, the main city in southern Lebanon. An AFP reporter found a burning car from which rescuers removed a body.
In a statement to the Beirut-based al-Mayadeen channel, the head of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Mounir Maqdah, confirmed that the attack had targeted his brother, Khalil Maqdah, specifically that he was a senior Fatah military officer. and was part of these brigades.
“Proof that Israel wants to burn the area”
This “assassination” is “additional evidence that Israel wants to organize the area and put it in a maximum war,” a member of the Fatah Central Committee charged on Wednesday in Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. in the occupied West. “The living soldiers are using Palestinian blood (…) to add fuel to the fire of war” in Gaza, added Toufiq Tirawy.
Since the start of the war in Gaza in October, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its allies, including the Palestinian Hamas, have launched attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon, but Fatah has not declared its involvement in the violence. The Israeli army responded by launching deep raids into Lebanon and targeting Hezbollah commanders and Lebanese-Palestinian allies.
The Ministry of Health of the Hamas government in Gaza also announced on Wednesday the new toll of 40,223 deaths in the Palestinian territories since the beginning of the war with Israel, in its eleventh month.
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