The number two of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, died this Tuesday in an Israeli attack on the outskirts of Beirut, the Palestinian Islamist movement revealed on its official channel, Al-Aqsa TV.
“Martyrdom of the vice president of the Hamas political office, Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, in a Zionist attack in Beirut,” the Palestinian group said when announcing the death of its leader.
The same information had already been provided to Agence France-Presse (AFP) by two sources from the Lebanese security authorities.
According to one of these officials cited by AFP, al-Arouri was killed along with his bodyguards in an Israeli attack targeting the Hamas office in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, an ally of Hamas.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the resulting explosion from an Israeli drone killed four people.
The explosion rocked the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital after dark, causing chaos there, but its cause was not immediately known.
Al-Arouri was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing and led the Palestinian group’s presence in the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to kill him even before the war against Hamas began on October 7, 2024.
The Israeli authorities have not yet commented on this attack in Beirut.
Source: TSF
