BEIRUT: Fears that the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza might spill over into neighboring countries grew on Tuesday when an Israeli drone strike killed Hamas’s deputy leader, Saleh Al-Arouri, in Beirut.
He was among six people who died in the attack in the city’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, the Lebanese National News Agency reported. Hamas said that the death would not “undermine the continued brave resistance” in Gaza.
“It proves once more the utter failure of the enemy to achieve any of its aggressive goals in the Gaza Strip,” said senior Hamas official Izzat Al-Rishq.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC that Israel “has not taken responsibility for this attack. But whoever did it, it must be clear, this was not an attack on the Lebanese state … Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership.”
Lebanon’s prime minister condemned the killing and said it “aims to draw Lebanon” further into “a new phase of confrontations” in the Israel-Hamas war.
“Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the explosion in the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed and injured many,” his office said. Hamas ally Hezbollah has been exchanging daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese authorities said they will lodge a formal complaint with the UN Security Council against the “blatant” strike in Beirut and any “new Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh described the drone strike as a “crime” and said there might be repercussions.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group warned that Israel’s killing of Al-Arouri in a Beirut suburb they control “will not go unanswered or unpunished,” dubbing “a serious assault on Lebanon.”
