Hamas announces the death of its number 2 in an Israeli strike near Beirut

According to the official Lebanese agency, the Israeli strike caused the death of six people.

Hamas number two was killed by an Israeli strike near Beirut on Tuesday January 2, announced the Palestinian Islamist movement and two Lebanese security officials, almost three months after the start of the conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. Exiled in Lebanon for several years, Saleh al-Arouri was killed along with his bodyguards in an Israeli strike which targeted the Hamas office in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, stronghold of pro-Iranian Hezbollah, according to two Lebanese officials of security. Six people in all died, according to the official Lebanese agency ANI.

The powerful and pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah claimed that“assassination” by Israel, in its stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, of the number two of Palestinian Hamas “would not go unpunished.” Is the Israeli army ready? “for any scenario”declared in the evening its spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Without directly mentioning the strike that killed Saleh al-Arouri, he said during his daily press briefing that the army is “at a high level of preparedness for any scenario.”

Released in 2010 on the condition that he goes into exile

The information of the death of Saleh al-Arouri was confirmed by official Hamas television. “Martyrdom of the vice-president of the Hamas political bureau, Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, in a Zionist strike in Beirut”the movement said in an announcement broadcast by its official channel, al-Aqsa TV and its other media outlets. “The cowardly assassinations carried out by the Zionist occupier against the leaders and symbols of our Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and resilience of our people, nor in hindering the continuation of his valiant resistance”also said Ezzat al-Rishq, member of the Hamas political bureau, in a statement.

After spending almost twenty years in total in Israeli prisons, Saleh al-Arouri was released in 2010 on the condition that he go into exile. His empty house was destroyed with explosives by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank at the end of October, according to witnesses.