2024-01-02 21:46:28
Hamas number two was killed by a strike blamed on Israel near Beirut on Tuesday, announced the Palestinian Islamist movement and two Lebanese security officials, almost three months after the start of the conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. Exiled in Lebanon for several years, Saleh al-Arouri was killed along with his bodyguards in an Israeli strike which targeted the Hamas office in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, stronghold of pro-Iranian Hezbollah. The information was confirmed by official Hamas television.
Tel Aviv, however, did not confirm being behind the shooting which killed six people in total, but did not deny it either. Questioned by AFP, the Israeli army indicated that it “does not comment on information from foreign media”. At least one other Hamas official, Samir Fandi, was also killed, a Lebanese security official said.
Nearly twenty years in prison
After spending almost twenty years in total in Israeli prisons, Saleh al-Arouri was released in 2010 on the condition that he go into exile. Accused by Israel of being the mastermind of numerous attacks, he was elected in 2017 deputy to the head of the Hamas political bureau Ismaïl Haniyeh, thus officially becoming the number two in the Islamist movement. His empty house was destroyed with explosives by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank at the end of October, according to witnesses.
A senior official of the Islamist movement, Ezzat al-Rishq, assured that the death of Saleh al-Arouri would not hinder “the valiant resistance” of the Palestinian people. The announcement of his death sparked condemnation in the region: the Lebanese Prime Minister denounced a “new Israeli crime (which) aims to drag Lebanon into a new phase of confrontation” with Israel, his counterpart in the Palestinian Authority. also warning “against the risks and consequences which could result”. Same story with Islamic Jihad, an armed group in Gaza, which denounced an “attempt by the Zionist enemy (…) to drag the entire region into war”.
Three months of war
The Palestinian Islamist movement carried out an attack of unprecedented scale on Israeli soil on October 7, killing 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, and taking around 250 people hostage – more than 100 of whom were released at the end of November during a truce, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel and the European Union, and has been shelling from the Gaza Strip, which has been under total siege since October 9. The war has cost the lives of 22,185 people in Gaza, mostly women, adolescents and children, Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007, announced on Tuesday. Despite pressing demands from the international community for a cease-fire late, the Israeli army is preparing for “prolonged fighting”, which should last “throughout the year”, warned its spokesperson, Daniel Hagari.
“Nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe”
“The idea that we could stop soon is wrong. Without a clear victory, we will not be able to live in the Middle East,” added Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who visited soldiers on Tuesday – 173 of whom have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the conflict. On the ground, witnesses reported, during the night from Monday to Tuesday, missile fire towards the city of Rafah (south) and bombings around the Jabaliya refugee camp (north). Fighting was also reported in the areas of al-Maghazi and Bureij, as well as in Khan Younes, a large city in the south of the territory, which has become the epicenter of Israeli army operations.
The latter assured Tuesday that it had killed “dozens of terrorists” in recent days in Gaza, where it said it had discovered and destroyed “tunnel entrances”. The Hamas Ministry of Health, for its part, announced on Tuesday the deaths of 70 people in the last 24 hours in Israeli raids. The Palestinian Red Crescent announced on the social network X (formerly Twitter) that its premises in Khan Younes had been targeted by Israeli strikes. According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, they left four dead, including an infant.
In the Nasser hospital in Khan Younès, an AFPTV journalist saw rescuers bringing in, often carrying them in their arms, injured people after this strike on the Red Crescent premises. Lying on stretchers, they are treated in agitation, the doctors working among children and adults present in the premises, many of whom film the scene with their cell phones. “We were in the premises of the Red Crescent, we are civilians evacuated from Gaza, we fled death (…). They told us to go to the South, that it would be safe, but they are liars. No place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” Fathi al-Af told AFPTV in tears, next to one of his children, sitting on a stretcher, his hair covered in gray dust.
#Saleh #alArouri #Hamas #number #killed #Israeli #strike #Beirut #suburbs