Blast in Beirut Kills Senior Hamas Leader

 

BREAKING LIVE

Updated

Jan. 2, 2024, 2:44 p.m. ET2 minutes ago

2 minutes ago

Israel-Hamas War

Blast in Beirut Kills Senior Hamas Leader

Hamas confirmed that Saleh al-Arouri, the group’s top deputy, had been killed in the explosion, along with two leaders of the group’s armed wing. Two U.S. officials said Israel was responsible for the strike.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/02/world/israel-supreme-court-gaza-news

Aaron Boxerman, Ben Hubbard, Ronen Bergman and Eric Schmitt

 

Here are the latest developments.

The deputy head of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, and two leaders of its armed wing were killed in an explosion in Lebanon on Tuesday, the group said on its official Telegram channel.

 

They died in what Hamas described as a “Zionist raid” in a suburb of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. Videos from the scene verified by The New York Times show at least one car engulfed in flames in front of a high-rise building as dozens of people gather in the area.

 

Two senior U.S. officials confirmed that Israel was responsible for the strike. One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions, said it was most likely the first of many covert strikes Israel will carry out against Hamas officials or operatives with any connections to the deadly Oct. 7 assault that killed 1,200 people.

 

Mr. al-Arouri was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and was elected the deputy chairman of the group’s political bureau in October 2017. His official role was head of Hamas in the West Bank and deputy to the group’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh. But regional security officials said that Mr. al-Arouri spent much of his time in recent years in Beirut, where he served as a sort of Hamas ambassador to Hezbollah, the politically powerful Lebanese armed group.

 

Lebanese state media said six people had been killed in the explosion. The blast occurred just before 6 p.m. local time, according to Lebanon’s civil defense agency.

 

The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In late November, Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised news conference that Israel would “operate against Hamas leaders wherever they are.”

 

Here is what else to know:

 

Israel’s military said it had begun withdrawing some troops from Gaza, part of a planned pullout of roughly five brigades. It did not offer details. But heavy fighting appeared to continue, with the military saying it had conducted several targeted operations across Gaza in the last few days, killing “dozens” of Hamas fighters.

 

A day after a landmark ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court challenged Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government, the country’s leaders appeared on Tuesday to want to avoid any immediate constitutional crisis during wartime. Analysts said that initial signals from Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party and right-wing allies about the need for national unity indicated that they might decline, at least until the war with Hamas is over, to take further steps to rein in the court.

 

In a narrow 8-7 decision, the judges struck down a law that Mr. Netanyahu’s government passed to limit the judiciary’s powers. The law had barred justices from using the concept of “reasonableness” as a legal standard to strike down government decisions. Its passage in July set off large-scale protests, led by Israeli liberals.

 

But the far more consequential part of Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, experts said, was the broader decision that justices have the authority to strike down Basic Laws if they harm the fundamental tenets of the Jewish and democratic character of the state. That precedent-setting part of the ruling passed by an overwhelming majority of 12 of the court’s 15 justices, with a 13th wavering.

 

Israel’s military said on Monday evening that there was a plan for the gradual return of Israeli residents to communities more than 2.5 miles from the border with Gaza, with additional defensive and emergency response measures. Several communities near the border were devastated in the Oct. 7 attacks.