Hamas deputy killed in Israeli strike on Beirut suburb

AFP | Beirut

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

An Israeli strike yesterday 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. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said late last night following Aruri’s killing that the group “will never be defeated”.

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.

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.