Israel assassinates deputy head of Hamas Saleh Al-Arouri

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Israel assassinated the Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Saleh Al-Arouri, in a targeted drone attack on the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Al-Arouri, the second-in-command in the Hamas movement and deputy head of the movement’s political bureau was targeted while in apartments on Hadi Nasrallah Highway in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut. Five of his companions were also killed in the strike.

In November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he ordered Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad to eliminate Hamas leaders wherever they are.

Mark Regev, an adviser to Netanyahu, told MSNBC that Israel had not taken responsibility for this attack, but “whoever did it, it must be clear: That this was not attack an attack on the Lebanese state.”

“Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” he said.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the explosion as a “new Israeli crime” and said it was an attempt to pull Lebanon into war.

Fifty-seven-year-old Al-Arouri was born in the town of Aroura near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah in 1966.

He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Islamic Sharia from Hebron University in the West Bank.

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