(Beirut) Hamas number two was killed by an Israeli strike near Beirut on Tuesday, 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.
The information was confirmed by official Hamas television.
PHOTO MOHAMMAD AUSTAZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saleh al-Arouri and Ismaïl Haniyeh
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.
The Palestinian Islamist movement carried out an attack of unprecedented scale on Israeli soil on October 7, killing 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, and taking around 250 people hostage. – more than 100 of whom were released at the end of November during a truce, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
PHOTO MOHAMED AZAKIR, REUTERS
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel and the European Union, and has been shelling from the Gaza Strip, which has been under total siege since October 9.
The war has cost the lives of 22,185 people in Gaza, mostly women, adolescents and children, Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007, announced on Tuesday.
Despite pressing demands from the international community for a ceasefire, the Israeli army is preparing for “protracted fighting”, which is expected to last “throughout the year”, warned its spokesperson, Daniel Hagari.
“Clear victory”
“The idea that we could stop soon is wrong. Without a clear victory, we will not be able to live in the Middle East,” added Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who visited soldiers on Tuesday – 173 of whom have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the conflict.
On the ground, witnesses reported, during the night from Monday to Tuesday, missile fire towards the city of Rafah (south) and bombings around the Jabaliya refugee camp (north).
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Palestinians march in the Rafah refugee camp.
Fighting was also reported in the areas of al-Maghazi and Bureij, as well as in Khan Younes, a large city in the south of the territory, which has become the epicenter of Israeli army operations.
The latter assured Tuesday that it had killed “dozens of terrorists” in recent days in Gaza, where it said it had discovered and destroyed “tunnel entrances”. The Hamas Ministry of Health, for its part, announced on Tuesday the deaths of 70 people in the last 24 hours in Israeli raids.
The Palestinian Red Crescent announced on the social network X that its premises in Khan Younes had been targeted by Israeli strikes. According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, they left four dead, including an infant.
In the Nasser hospital in Khan Younès, an AFPTV journalist saw rescuers bringing in, often carrying them in their arms, injured people after this strike on the Red Crescent premises. Lying on stretchers, they are treated in agitation, the doctors working among children and adults present in the premises, many of whom film the scene with their cell phones.
“We were in the premises of the Red Crescent, we are civilians evacuated from Gaza, we fled death […]. They told us to go south, that it would be safe, but they are liars. No place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” said Fathi al-Af in tears, next to one of his children, sitting on a stretcher, his hair covered in gray dust.
“Everyone is terrified”
The war has caused immense destruction and a humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory, where famine threatens and most hospitals are out of service.
“We came to the hospital for shelter,” said Hiyan Shamlakh, 50, at al-Quds hospital in the northern Gaza City. “But no one can sleep, everyone is terrified, children, women, the elderly […]. We don’t know where to go. We have been evacuated from our homes, but here too we are afraid, because of the missiles.”
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A woman prepares bread dough near the rubble of a destroyed building in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents – 85% of whom have been displaced according to the UN – face severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine.
Despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding the delivery of humanitarian aid, aid trucks are still arriving in trickles.
International efforts, notably by Egypt and Qatar, to secure a new truce, have not materialized. At the end of November, a one-week truce allowed the release of more than 100 hostages and the entry of limited aid into Gaza.
According to the American site Axios, citing anonymous Israeli sources, Hamas proposed a new plan on Sunday for an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but it was rejected by the Israeli government.
On Tuesday, Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh for his part assured – before the strike which killed Saleh al-Arouri – that the hostages still held in Gaza would only be released under the conditions set by the movement, during a televised speech. .
Mr. Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, also announced that Hamas was “open” to the establishment, at the end of the war, of a single Palestinian government in this territory and in the West Bank, seat of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.