Hamas second in command killed by Israeli drone strike in Beirut

Al-Arouri was one of the top Hamas leaders on Israel’s target list.

By JNS

An Israeli drone strike on a Hamas office in Beirut eliminated top terror chief Saleh al-Arouri, according to Lebanese reports.

The explosion rocked the south Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold.

A senior Palestinian official was killed in the blast, Reuters reported.

Al-Arouri, the commander of Hamas operations in Judea in Samaria and the deputy politburo chief under Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh, has been based in Lebanon in recent years.

Al-Arouri was one of the top Hamas leaders on Israel’s target list following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre of at least 1,200 persons in the northwestern Negev.

Israeli forces raided a home in Samaria belonging to al-Arouri on Oct. 21, detaining more than 20 people, including one of his brothers and nine of his nephews.

Al-Arouri is credited with orchestrating the deep relationship between Hamas and Iran, and also played a key role in re-establishing the Palestinian terrorist group’s ties with Damascus, which were severed in 2012 during the Syrian civil war.

He was recruited into Hamas in 1985 while studying Sharia law at Hebron University and had served 18 years in Israeli prisons. He was deported to Syria in 2010.