Drone strike in Beirut kills Hamas deputy leader | DW News

Drone strike in Beirut kills Hamas deputy leader | DW News

An explosion in Beirut has killed s aruri a top official of the Palestinian militant group Hamas which is considered a terror organization by the US the EU and many other countries Lebanon state run news agency said the blast killed four people in a Southern suburb of

Beirut and was carried out by an Israeli drone the suburb is considered a stronghold of lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group Israeli officials declined to comment but prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill eror even before the October 7th Hamas Terror attacks let’s get more on this from our

Correspondent abas alash in Beirut abas what more can you tell us about this strike right now you could as you say it’s six person six people were killed in an drawn strike today what two hours ago uh it was targeting um Al is in beirut’s southern uh suburbs it’s

Called Alia in Beirut and we could hear the the explosion was quite strong um the officials say that um there are three three three person couldn’t identifyed were killed and we are waiting of the the the next development um Al is it’s very busy area it’s it’s

Not far from here from DV office about 5 km far from here and it’s very busy area in this time it was it’s evening and everybody was on the road and we maybe there are some civilians uh being injured during this attack figure was sori in the ranks of

Hamas he is one of the top leaders in Hamas he is one of the founder of alasam group the military Wing in Hamas and and he is um he became a member of poit buau since 20110 and he uh returned back to Beirut in 2017 he was outside Beirut and because

There was some misunderstanding between hisbah and Hamas because the war in Syria so he is one of the most important uh top leaders in Hamas uh poit buau and targeting him it means a lot to Hamas and for hisbah exactly especially because there’s being targeted this person being targeted by um in

An strike draw strike in Al south of Beirut so it means a lot to know how have Lebanese authorities reacted to this strike in the capital there are different kind of reactions um there are some politicians condemns condemn the the attack and this and the prime minister of leanan he say

Mr mikati condemned Israel’s killing ofori he said uh the attack aims to draw libanan further into the Israel Hamas War uh uh into new phase of the uh confrontation M with with Israel and um now we heard that leanon to submit complain to un Security Council against

The strike so there are some um some reactions here but the people here around in B are very worried and the situation became really complicated and very critical now we have to be clear here that Israel has not yet claimed or has not claimed responsibility for this

Strike uh you mentioned there the um prime minister talking about being drawn into a conflict among the population how big are fears of a wider conflict conflict uh the the fierce is quite big in fact because we were talking here in Lebanon the people talking here lean

About they call it like the Rules of Engagement between Israel and hisbah now there is a new Dynamic for this conflict we are talking about targeting alah the South suffers of Beirut so now we are we are we have a new rules maybe nobody knows um especially that the people are

Waiting tomorrow speech of H the leader of ofah and we don’t know how will situation will be continued and will be will be um developed nobody knows the people are waiting the speech of Hass and usually when he is speaking about something about Israel and the conflict

With Israel uh the people are in leanon very worry and they are waiting his speech carefully because um uh hisbah is one is well trained Fighters they have about 100,000 Fighters well trained fighters in leanan and they are um they are always on the south of leanon we

Were talk about before about the targeting on the border Israel targeting Village or some uh fighters of hisbah on the border leane border and hisbah targeting and uh strikes another another um uh another on the other side of Israel now we are talking about targeting and strike inside Beirut and

This means a lot that abas alali thank you for that thank you and moving on to Sami s who’s following the story for us from Tel Aviv Sami what has the reaction in Israel been to the bayroot strike well first of all prime minister Benjamin Nan has ordered the Ministers

Of his cabinet not to give any statements about this uh strike nevertheless Danny donon who is a member of the leud party and he’s also member of the foreign and the security committee inside the keset it’s a committee that is exposed to a top secrets and so forth he commented on Twitter by

Congratulating the IDF the mosad the she bet for the assassination ofi and what he’s saying and others is that salahi not not only is the number two of the Hamas movement but he’s also the one who was engaged in the attack that was launched in October the 7th of

October attack and what commentators here are saying that this strike that was launched by Israel is a very successful one as it was a a maybe the most successful attack that Israel launched since the beginning of its war against Hamas and that this is a great achievement for the Israeli intelligence

That has failed on the 7th of October and now it has come back to its uh reputation of being a force that can Target and kill an individual in a crowded City in an exact way yeah still we need to be precise Israel has not claimed responsibility for the killing

Of s aruri how big are fears in Israel that events like these could escalate the conflict with Hamas to a regional War yeah well indeed the uh cabinet was going to have a meeting tonight here in Tel Aviv a to discuss Gaza and so forth will this meeting has been cancelled because of

The latest development and there is concern that hisbah will launch missiles towards Israel on the other hand there is also a an assessment that maybe the movement will decide not to strike at Israel uh because Israel strike a Hamas a Palestinian Target rather than a Lebanese Target and that hisbah will be

Paying a very heavy price if it will launch long range missiles towards Israel but I can tell you the ones that are most worried are the families of the hostages there’s a report that Hamas has announced that the talks are finished because of this assassination and the many family members of hostages

That are kept in Gaza are fearful that this will postpone any kind of development in the release of their loved ones there is another report that Anthony blinkin Secretary of State the United States that was supposed to come here postponed his trip we don’t have a confirmation of that but nevertheless

Israel is bracing for an escalation that was journalist Sami so in Tel Aviv thanks for that update and for a closer look we can now speak to hansjakob Shindler he’s the senior director at the counterterrorism project that’s an NGO and international policy group he joins us from New York

City good to see you can you tell us more about Hamas Deputy leader s aruri thank you so much for having me yes I mean as uh some of your previous speakers have said he’s a really senior figure in the movement he was there right from from the beginning he

Radicalized already in ‘ 85 and he was studying in Hebron and then joined Hamas right from the outset when the organization was founded in 1988 co-founding the AL Kazam brigades from that time of course is also a personal relationship between him and Yahya sinra the current leader of Hamas in Gaza and

The Mastermind behind the October 7 attacks he was then multiple years in Israeli jails released in 2010 allegedly as part of theil chalit deal although Hamas denied this and then left Israel for Syria got thrown out of Syria because of the Civil War in 2012 went to

Turkey got thrown out of turkey in 2015 went to Qatar got thrown out of Qatar in 2017 and is or has been in Beirut as the quazi Hamas ambassador to hisbah and one of the key leas on individuals of Hamas to the Islamic Republic of Iran there’s

Also videos of him being being in a meeting with Iranian supreme leader Ali so really a key very experienced organizer and leader of the Hamas movement could his killing weaken Hamas to a certain extent it does obviously Hamas is a collective leadership so there’s more than one individual that leads the organization

But uh there is a limited amount of operatives especially Terror operatives um with this amount of experience that amount of international relations and that amount of insights into Hamas finances outside the Gaza Strip then arui so in a way of course it will weaken amas but of course it’s nothing

Like a silver bullet that would now really hamper the uh organization’s ability in in Gaza to you know fight Israel Salia rui was living in Lebanon how strong is hamas’s presence in the country um hamas’s presence in the country really is um a function of its relationship with hisa in Iran that’s

Where the connections happening allegedly he was killed in a meeting between isbah the palestin Islamic Jihad and uh Hamas in Beirut uh a couple of hours ago so in a way it is more of a representation rather than an operational area for Hamas now Israel has not claimed

Responsibility is there anyone else that you are aware of who would be interested in moving Al out of the picture I mean clearly Israel is of course the country and the government most likely to have done this U as in the past unless they’re absolutely forced to they’re not going to admit to

Extra judicial killings outside of the Palestinian territories but I don’t see anyone uh that has the same likelihood than Israel to have uh conducted that attack and now with with this having happened reactions are are coming in do you think that fears of a widening of this conflict in the region are

Justified well of course in this tense situation anything is of course a bit of a risk uh I I see that some Israeli politicians are already doing some damage control marre the senior advisor to netan said very clearly he doesn’t know who did it but whoever did it this

Was not an attack against uh the state of Lebanon um there has been a slow but very steady heating up of the hisas attacks to Israel every day every week there are more Rockets going into uh Northern Israel so it is of course a tense situation but as uh prime minister

Netanyahu said in November Israel is going to hunt down all of the significant Hamas leaders wherever they are and so it seems very much this is the first time they actually made good on that promise the senior director of counter extremism of the counter extremism project Hans yakob shinda thank you for your

Assessment thank you so much for having me

An explosion in Beirut has killed top Hamas official Saleh Arouri. Lebanon’s state-run news agency said the blast killed six people in Beirut’s southern suburbs and was carried out by an Israeli drone.
Israel has not confirmed or denied that it was behind the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill Arouri even before the October 7th Hamas terror attacks. Hamas has been classified as a terror organization by multiple entities.

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