Hamas says Israel strike on Beirut killed its deputy chief

Beirut, Lebanon – AFP

Israel’s war against Palestinians reached into the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, where an Israeli strike killed Hamas’s deputy leader, the group and security officials in Lebanon said.

A high-level security official told AFP that Saleh al-Aruri was killed along with his bodyguards in the strike by Israel, which vowed to destroy Hamas after the movement’s unprecedented attacks on Israel on October 7.

A second security official confirmed the information, adding two floors of the targeted building and one car were damaged. Lebanese state media reported the strike hit a Hamas office in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah.

Hamas TV also said Israel had killed Aruri in Beirut. And Lebanese media said a total of six people were killed in the strike.

The strike will add to persistent fears that the nearly three-month-old Israeli-Hamas war could become a wider conflagration.

Hamas fighters killed around 1,140 people in their October attacks, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. They also took around 250 people prisoner, 129 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israeli figures.

After the worst attack in its history, Israel began a relentless bombardment and ground offensive that has killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

On Tuesday in Gaza, Israeli forces battled Hamas fighters among the ruins of the heavily-bombed Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s health ministry said 70 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the previous 24 hours during Israeli raids.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, Israel twice struck the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) headquarters, PRCS said, resulting in “five casualties and three injuries” among displaced people who had sought refuge there and at a nearby hospital.

The health ministry in Gaza said four people were killed including an infant.

“They told us to go to the south that is safe, but they are liars,” shouted Fathi al-Af, pointing to his daughter on a stretcher on the floor of Nasser Hospital after the strike. “The entire Gaza Strip is not safe.”

United Nations agencies have voiced alarm over Gaza’s spiralling humanitarian crisis that has left 2.4 million people under siege and bombardment, most of them displaced and crowded into shelters and tents.

The World Health Organization has warned of the risk of famine, and disease.

– Prisoner exchange –

The Israeli army says 173 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.

US news outlet Axios, citing unnamed Israeli sources, said Hamas had presented Israel with a proposal on Sunday for a new prisoner exchange deal via Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

The official told Axios the proposal had been deemed unacceptable by the Israeli war cabinet, but suggested progress could be made towards a more amenable plan in future.

Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, speaking on Tuesday before Aruri’s death, said Israeli prisoners will only be freed “on terms set by the resistance.”

Aruri, in early December, had said: “The price to pay for the release of Zionist prisoners will be the release of all our prisoners -– after a ceasefire.”

Aruri, who lived in exile, was elected deputy to Haniyeh in 2017, before being officially named the group’s number two.

In October the Israeli army demolished Aruri’s home in the occupied West Bank.

In a televised address Tuesday, Haniyeh also said Hamas is “open to the idea of a national government for the West Bank and Gaza.”