Hamas Deputy Leader Killed by Israel in Beirut Drone Attack

Israel assassinated the deputy leader of Hamas Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday by a drone strike in Beirut, Lebanese and Palestinian security sources said.

Arouri, 57, was the first senior Hamas political leader to be assassinated since Israel launched an air and ground offensive against Gaza’s Hamas almost three months ago after a Hamas terrorist rampage into Israeli towns.

Reuters reports that his killing could heighten the risk of the Israel-Hamas war spreading well beyond the Gaza Strip. Lebanon’s heavily armed Hezbollah group, a Hamas ally, has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel across Lebanon’s southern border since the war in Gaza began.

New video from the moments of the assassination of senior Hamas officials last night in Beirut.
Pay attention to the multiple blasts that made sure no one will survive!
🦌💪🏻
💥💥#FuckHamas pic.twitter.com/m55yWEDkGE

— Naturalized Deer 🇮🇱 (@PingouinHeureux) January 3, 2024

Hamas radio and TV and Lebanon’s pro-Iranian Mayadeen TV confirmed word from security sources that Arouri, a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement’s politburo based abroad and a co-founder of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz-el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, had been killed when a drone struck a Hamas office in south Beirut.

The drone attack killed six people in the city’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah redoubt, the Lebanese state news agency said. Two security sources said the drone targeted a meeting and Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV said commanders of the group’s armed wing in Lebanon – Samir Findi Abu Amer and Azzam Al-Aqraa Abu Ammar – were among the dead.

Reactions to the killing of Hamas official by Israel

Asked to confirm that Israel was behind Arouri’s slaying, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told a media briefing: “We are focused on killing Hamas.”

Israel had accused Arouri of ordering and supervising Hamas attacks in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for years.

“I am waiting for martyrdom (death) and I think I have lived too long,” Arouri said in August 2023, alluding to Israeli threats to eliminate Hamas leaders whether in Gaza or abroad.

Arouri had spent time recently in both Lebanon and Qatar, where a Hamas official said he was at “the heart of negotiations” conducted by Cairo and Doha over ways of resolving the Gaza conflict, and the release of hostages Hamas took in its Oct. 7 incursion into Israel.

Lebanese caretaker premier Najib Mikati condemned the attack as a “new Israeli crime” and an attempt to pull Lebanon into war. His office said he asked his foreign minister to file a complaint to the U.N. Security Council over all “new Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty”.

Nasser Kanaani, the spokesperson for the foreign ministry of Iran, and a major supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah said Arouri’s killing would “undoubtedly ignite another surge in the veins of resistance and the motivation to fight against the Zionist occupiers, not only in Palestine but also in the region and among all freedom-seekers worldwide”.

In a televised speech in August, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned Israel against carrying out any assassinations on Lebanese soil, vowing a “severe reaction”.

Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of Ramallah and other towns in the West Bank to condemn Arouri’s killing, chanting, “Revenge, revenge, Qassam!”