Hamas says Israel strikes kill two operatives in Lebanon

Palestinian militant group Hamas said Israeli strikes killed two of its operatives in north and east Lebanon on Saturday, as Israel’s military confirmed the killing of two Hamas figures.

Saeed Attallah Ali, his wife, and two daughters were killed in “Zionist bombardment of his house in the Beddawi camp” near the northern city of Tripoli, Hamas said, in the first such Israeli strike in the area since cross-border fighting began a year ago.

Israel’s military said it had killed “a senior member of Hamas’s military wing in Lebanon”.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said a strike hit a flat in the densely populated Beddawi refugee camp, where an AFP photographer saw a fire raging inside an apartment as rescuers rushed to the site of the raid.

Hamas, which has been fighting Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since its October 7 attack that triggered the ongoing war there, announced later on Saturday the death of Muhammad Hussein al-Lawis in an Israeli strike in the Saadnayel area in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region.

Israel’s military said it had killed a militant “who served as Hamas’s executive authority in Lebanon”.

The Lebanese branch of another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, also mourned one of its members on Saturday. It was not immediately clear where he had been killed.

Israel has repeatedly targeted Hamas officials in Lebanon since the Gaza war erupted a year ago on Monday.

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Hamas has announced the deaths of at least 20 of its militants in Lebanon since then.

The group said an air strike on Monday killed its leader in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amine, in his home in the Al-Bass camp in south Lebanon.

In August, an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the south Lebanon city of Sidon killed Hamas commander Samer al-Hajj.

A strike in January, which a US defense official said was carried out by Israel, killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri and six other militants in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold.

Lebanon’s dozen Palestinian refugee camps were created for those who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation.

By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army stays out of the camps and leaves the Palestinian factions to handle security.