Although its enemies threatened to exact “punishment” for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Beirut, Israel has maintained that the incident was not an attack on Lebanon.
According to an Israeli spokesman, Saleh al-Arouri passed away during a “surgical strike against the Hamas leadership”.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, claimed the death was an attack on Lebanese sovereignty, while Hamas denounced the death. Meanwhile, the prime minister of Lebanon charged that Israel was attempting “to drag Lebanon into… confrontation”.
According to Lebanese media, six people—two Hamas military commanders and four other members—were killed in a drone strike in southern Beirut, including Arouri, the organization’s deputy political leader.
Saleh al-Arouri was a prominent member of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and a close ally of the organization’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Serving as a liaison between his organisation and Hezbollah, he had been in Lebanon. Since Israel and Hamas went to war following the group’s attack on October 7, Arouri, 57, is the most senior Hamas figure to be killed.
Throughout the Gaza War, Hezbollah has engaged in multiple skirmishes with Israeli forces and launched numerous rockets into Israel. According to Lebanon’s official news agency, Arouri was killed by an Israeli drone strike on a Hamas office in the Dahiyeh suburb of southern Beirut. Dahiyeh is regarded as a Hezbollah stronghold.
Hezbollah declared that Arouri’s passing “to be a serious assault on Lebanon, its people, its security, sovereignty, and resistance, and the highly symbolic and significant political and security messages it contains”.
