An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed Saleh al-Aruri, deputy head of the Hamas movement, in a southern Beirut stronghold of Hamas ally Hezbollah, two security officials told AFP.
Hamas later confirmed Aruri’s death, which Lebanese state media said came in an Israeli drone strike that killed a total of six people.
The attack marked an escalation of the nearly three-month war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. Aruri, one of Hamas’s principal military strategists, is the first senior official of the movement killed during the war, and his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.
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There have been regular cross-border exchanges of fire over Lebanon’s southern border between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.
Asked about the Beirut strike, the Israeli military said it “does not comment on foreign media reports.”
A high-level security official in Lebanon told AFP that Aruri was killed along with his bodyguards.
Another security official confirmed the same information, adding that two floors of the targeted building and one car were damaged.
Hamas later confirmed the death on its official TV channel, saying Aruri was killed in a “treacherous Zionist strike”.
The movement’s media said the strike killed two other members of its armed wing.
