By Raffi Berg
People gather at the site of a strike, reported by Lebanese media to be an Israeli strike targeting a Hamas office. Photo: -
The deputy head of Hamas, the Palestinian group which rules Gaza, has been killed in a blast in Lebanon, a senior Hamas official has told the BBC.
Local media said Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli drone attack in the south of the capital, Beirut.
At least three other people were reportedly also killed in the incident. Israel has not commented.
Arouri is the most senior Hamas figure to be killed since Israel went to war with Hamas after its 7 October attack.
On that day, waves of Hamas gunmen invaded Israel and attacked communities around the border, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 back to Gaza as hostages.
Israel launched a military offensive in response, with the declared aim of destroying Hamas. Since then, more than 22,000 Palestinians - mostly women and children - have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.
Lebanon's state news agency says an Israeli drone hit a Hamas office in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh on Tuesday night.
A witness from the Reuters news agency saw firefighters and paramedics gathered around a high-rise building where there was a large hole in what appeared to be the third floor.
Video footage on social media showed a car in flames and extensive damage to buildings in what is a busy residential area.
Dahiyeh is known as a stronghold of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, an avowed enemy of Israel and ally of Hamas.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas's political leadership, called Arouri's killing a "cowardly assassination", Reuters reported.
Israel has not commented domestically and the Israeli military told the BBC it would not comment on foreign media reports.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously vowed to eliminate Hamas's leaders, wherever they are.
Arouri, 57, was deputy head of Hamas's political bureau and considered the de facto leader of Hamas's military wing in the West Bank, overseeing attacks there, according to Israeli media reports.
He is believed to have been involved in the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank in 2014, reports say, and had served time in Israeli jails for other attacks.
The Times of Israel says he was also one of the Hamas officials most closely connected to Iran and Hezbollah.
The United Nations has described the drone strike as extremely worrying .
A spokesperson for the UN secretary general says it highlighted the danger of the conflict spilling over .
This story was originally published on BBC.
