The Palestinian movement Hamas announced Monday that its leader in Lebanon had been killed in an airstrike in the south of the country, where the Israeli army is carrying out raids against Hezbollah.
• Also read: At least four dead in Israeli strike on Beirut, first since October 7
• Also read: At least 105 dead in Lebanon in violent Israeli raids
“Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amine, the leader of Hamas in Lebanon and a member of the movement’s leadership abroad,” was killed in a strike on his house in the al-Bass Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Lebanon, said a Hamas press release.
He was killed with his wife, his son and his daughter during a “terrorist and criminal assassination”, added the Islamist movement.
The official Lebanese agency ANI reported an airstrike on al-Bass, near the city of Tyre, in the south of the country, the first of its kind on this refugee camp.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left-wing secular Palestinian group, earlier announced the deaths of three of its members in an Israeli strike in Beirut, the first targeting the heart of the Lebanese capital since the Palestinian Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
This group supports Lebanese Hezbollah in its operations in northern Israel “in support” of Hamas in its war against Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army intensified its bombings in Lebanon from September 23 to allow, according to it, the return to northern Israel of its inhabitants displaced by the exchange of fire with Hezbollah.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel has targeted Hamas officials in Lebanon.
On January 2, 2024, Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed near Beirut in a strike attributed to Israel.
In August, an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the southern Lebanese town of Saida killed Samer al-Hajj, a Hamas official in Lebanon’s Ain el-Heloue Palestinian refugee camp.
According to UN estimates, nearly 250,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants still reside in Lebanon. They had taken refuge in this country after being expelled or fleeing their lands at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948, according to the UN.
Under a long-standing agreement, the Lebanese army does not deploy to Palestinian camps where security is provided by Palestinian factions.
