Senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri was killed by a strike in Beirut on Tuesday, an attack that Lebanese officials pinned on Israel.
Lebanese state media claimed several people perished in the blast carried out by an Israeli drone, The Associated Press reported. Officials with Hamas and Hezbollah said Arouri was among the dead.
Israel had not taken responsibility for the strike as of press time, but the blast does come as Israeli forces continue to fight Hamas in the Gaza Strip nearly three months after the group’s terrorist attacks on Israeli soil that killed about 1,200 people and led to hundreds more being taken hostage.
“Whoever did it, it must be clear: That this was not an attack on the Lebanese state,” Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC, according to Reuters. He added, “Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership.”
Arouri was reportedly second in command of Hamas and served as commander of the group in the West Bank. He founded the Hamas military arm known as the Qassam Brigades, which has carried out attacks against Israel for decades.
The State Department said Arouri was “linked to several terrorist attacks, hijackings, and kidnappings” and had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on his whereabouts.
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What will follow Arouri’s demise was not immediately clear, but it could stoke an escalation in the fighting as Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran, has already warned Israel of a broader regional conflict, and the two sides have exchanged fire along their border amid rising tensions.
“Why it matters: Arouri is the most senior Hamas leader that was killed since the October 7 attack,” Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist who works for Axios and CNN, said in a post to X. “The assassination which took place in the heart of Beirut very close to Hezbollah’s headquarters could push the Lebanese militia to escalate its attacks against Israel.”
Ravid added later: “A senior Israeli official told me Israel is preparing for a significant retaliation by Hezbollah for the Arouri assassination including by launching long range missiles on targets in Israel.”