BEIRUT (Reuters) -Deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday night in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a stronghold of the allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, three security sources told Reuters.
In response to questions from Reuters, the Israeli military said it does not respond to reports in the foreign media.
Lebanon’s national news agency said six people were killed when the drone struck a Hamas office. Two security sources said the strike had targeted a meeting and that another Palestinian militant commander was among them, but there were no details on the additional four casualties.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC that Israel had not taken responsibility for this attack, but “whoever did it, it must be clear: That this was not an attack on the Lebanese state.”
“Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” Regev said in the interview.
Arouri was deputy head of Hamas’s politburo and a founder of its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, which carried out a deadly assault in Israeli territory on Oct. 7.
He had spent time recently in both Lebanon and Qatar, which has mediated talks between Hamas and Israel including on hostages Hamas took in its Oct. 7 assault. The U.S., which brands Hamas a terrorist group, had last year offered $5 million for information on Arouri.
Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa radio confirmed Arouri’s killing. Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Sharq called it a “cowardly assassination.”
Islamic Jihad vowed revenge in a statement, saying: “This crime will not go unpunished and the resistance will continue until the occupation is removed.”
Iran said the killing would further galvanize the fight against Israel, while Yemen’s Houthi movement expressed condolences.
In Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, hundreds took to the streets to urge retaliation, shouting “Revenge, revenge, Qassam.”
‘NEW CRIME’
A Reuters witness in Dahiyeh saw firefighters and paramedics gathered around a multi-storey building with a gaping hole in what appeared to be the third floor. Limbs and other pieces of flesh could be seen on the roadside.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati called the strike a “new Israeli crime” and said it was an attempt to pull Lebanon into war. His office said he asked Lebanon’s foreign minister to file a complaint to the United Nations Security Council.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah plans an address on Wednesday to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the killing of Iranian Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani in a U.S. drone strike on Baghdad.
In a televised speech in August, Nasrallah had cautioned Israel against carrying out any assassinations on Lebanese soil, vowing a “severe reaction.”
Hezbollah controls security in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh. In 2019, two Israeli drones crashed in the district.
Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel across Lebanon’s southern frontier since Hamas carried out the Oct. 7 attack.
Israeli air strikes and shelling have killed more than 100 Hezbollah fighters and nearly two dozen civilians since then, including children, elderly and several journalists.
Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 240 were taken hostage on Oct. 7, and Israel has responded with a nearly three-month-old offensive in Hamas-run Gaza where Palestinian health officials say the death toll has surpassed 22,000.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Laila Bassam; Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi; Editing by William Maclean and Howard Goller)
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