Hamas announces its leader in Lebanon killed in airstrike

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 has been carrying out raids against Hezbollah.

“Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, the leader of Hamas in Lebanon and a member of the movement's leadership abroad,” was killed in a strike on his home in the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Bass in southern Lebanon, Hamas said in a statement.

He was killed along with his wife, son and daughter in a “terrorist and criminal assassination,” the Islamist movement added.

The official Lebanese news 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 secular left-wing Palestinian group, had earlier announced the death 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 on Israel on October 7, 2023.

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This group supports Lebanese Hezbollah in its operations carried out on northern Israel “in support” of Hamas in its war against Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army has intensified its bombings in Lebanon since September 23 to allow, according to it, the return to northern Israel of its residents displaced by the exchanges of fire with Hezbollah.

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Israel has targeted officials of Hamas in Lebanon.

On January 2, 2024, Hamas's 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 city of Sidon killed Samer al-Hajj, a Hamas official in the Ain el-Heloue Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

According to UN estimates, nearly 250,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants still reside in Lebanon. They had sought refuge there after being expelled or fleeing their lands when Israel was created in 1948, according to the UN.

Under a long-standing agreement, the Lebanese army does not deploy in Palestinian camps where security is provided by Palestinian factions.

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