The number two of the Palestinian armed group Saleh al-Arouri He died this Tuesday in an explosion in a southern suburb of Beirut. This has been confirmed by the organization itself through its radio station. For its part, Al Mayadeen, a television channel of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, also reported his death and later added that “the murder will not go unpunished.”
“We, Hezbollah, affirm that this crime will not remain unanswered nor unpunished. Our hands are on the trigger and our fighters are prepared at the highest level,” the Lebanese group said in a statement. “We consider the crime of assassinating Sheikh Saleh al Aruri in the heart of the southern suburb of Beirut to be a serious attack against Lebanon. and a dangerous event in the course of the war,” he added.
Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, had led the group’s presence in the West Bank. Before the attack by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7, Al Arouri was Israel’s main target, considering him above all responsible for planning, financing and ordering, first from Turkey and then from Beirut, numerous attacks in and from the West Bank. The Israeli Government, however, did not give the green light to kill this well-known leader of Hamas abroad and one of the founders of its armed wing due to the possibility that his assassination would provoke a large-scale confrontation in the Gaza Strip. In the end, the order has been reversed. After 88 days of war in the Gaza Strip, a drone attacked an apartment in a Beirut suburb, killing Arouri and other Hamas members.
The fact that the targeted airstrike occurred in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyah, a stronghold of the Shiite group Hezbollah, raises the chances that its leader Hassan Nasrallah, very close to Arouri, order retaliation that goes beyond the drones and anti-tank missiles fired in recent months against northern Israel as a show of solidarity and support for Hamas.
Israeli authorities declined to comment, AP reports. However, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the explosion killed five other people and was carried out by an Israeli drone. The drone fired at least two missiles at the Hamas regional office located in the south of Beirut, where Al Arouri is believed to be located.