An explosion in Beirut on Tuesday killed Saleh al-Arouri, a top official with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, along with three others, officials with Hamas and the Lebanese group Hezbollah said.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the blast killed four people and was carried out by an Israeli drone. Israeli officials declined to comment.
If Israel is behind the attack, it could mark a major escalation in the Middle East conflict. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to retaliate against any Israeli targeting of Palestinian officials in Lebanon.
Hamas official Bassem Naim confirmed to The Associated Press that al-Arouri was killed in the blast. A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, also said al-Arouri was killed.
Al-Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, had headed the group’s presence in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him even before the Hamas-Israel war began on Oct. 7.
The explosion shook Musharafieh, one of Beirut’s southern suburbs and a stronghold of the militant Hezbollah group, which is an ally of Hamas. The explosion caused fire in Hadi Nasrallah street, south of Beirut.
The last two months have seen heavy exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and members of Hezbollah along Lebanon’s southern border.
While millions in Gaza scramble for any sort of shelter, Israel claims it’s trying to be more ‘surgical’ in its military operations to reduce civilian casualties, but also warns its campaign to crush Hamas could last months.
Since Oct. 8, the fighting has been concentrated a few kilometres from the border but on several occasions Israel’s air force has hit Hezbollah targets deeper in Lebanon.
Earlier in the day, Hezbollah said its fighters carried out several attacks along the Lebanon-Israel border that targeted Israeli military posts.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 others were taken hostage.
Israel responded with an air, ground and sea offensive that has killed more than 21,900 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Israel has said more than 8,000 militants have been killed. It blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll, saying the militants embed within residential areas, including schools and hospitals.
The war has displaced some 85 per cent of Gaza’s population, forcing hundreds of thousands of people into overcrowded shelters or teeming tent camps in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has later bombed.