Saleh al-Arouri, the number two of Hamas was killed with his bodyguards, this Tuesday evening, in an Israeli strike that targeted the Hamas office in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
It is the first time since the start of the war in Gaza that Israel has hired the Lebanese capital. The clashes between the Israeli army and the Lebanese Hezbollah were hitherto limited to border areas in southern Lebanon.
This Tuesday, January 2, an Israeli drone targeted the premises of Hamas in the suburbs of Beirut in Lebanon killing six people including Saleh al-Arouri and several injured.
The acting Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati denounced an “new Israeli crime” and estimated that it was a new attempt by Israel to push Lebanon to take part in the war.
Saleh Arouri was elected in 2017 assistant to the head of the Hamas Ismaïl Haniyeh Hamas Political Bureau, thus officially becoming the number two of the Islamist movement.
After spending nearly twenty years in Israeli prisons, he was released in 2010 provided he went into exile in Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him even before the war between Hamas and Israel on October 7.
