2024-01-03 04:51:29
It is undoubtedly the most important target shot down by the IDF since the start of the conflict between the Hebrew State and Hamas. The number two of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in an Israeli strike on the suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday evening, the Hamas political office announced.
He was mowed down with his bodyguards and several other people by an Israeli strike which targeted the Hamas office in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, stronghold of pro-Iranian Hezbollah.
According to the Lebanese daily The Orient-The DaySaleh Arouri – who was around fifty years old – was born in the West Bank (Palestinian territory today largely occupied by Israel) in a village near Ramallah.
After spending almost twenty years in total in Israeli prisons, Saleh Arouri was released in 2010 on the condition that he go into exile and has lived in Lebanon ever since.
The mastermind of several attacks
Accused by Israel of being the mastermind of numerous attacks, he was elected deputy to the head of the Hamas political bureau Ismaïl Haniyeh in 2017, thus officially becoming the number two in the Islamist movement. According to the Israeli daily Jerusalem Posthe was notably suspected of playing an important role in the terrorist activities of Hamas in the West Bank.
According to the Lebanese daily, he was also one of the main negotiators during discussions aimed at freeing Israeli hostages from Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. This did not prevent, on October 31, the Israeli army from blowing up his house, in the village of Aroura, near Ramallah, in the West Bank.
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