Hamas confirms death of its leader in Lebanon in an Israeli attack
Israel's operation against Hamas and Hezbollah continues to leave fatalities among the leaders of the Israeli army's rival groups.
Hamas has confirmed the death of Fatah Sharif Abu Al-Amin in an Israeli Air Force strike that targeted his home in the Al-Bass camp in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, near the Israeli border
Abu Al-Amin is the second prominent leader of the movement to be fatally attacked by Israel in Lebanon after the death of the movement's vice-president, Saleh Al-Arouri, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs last January.
Fatah Sharif Abu Al-Amin was the top leader of the Palestinian extremist organisation in Lebanon and a member of the movement's leadership abroad. The Islamist organisation also said the Hamas leader's wife and son and daughter-in-law were killed in the Israeli attack.
‘Commander Fatah Sharif was killed at dawn today following a terrorist and criminal assassination operation in an airstrike that targeted his entire family at their home in the al-Bass refugee camp in southern Lebanon,’ Hamas said in an official statement.
In recent days, Israel has shifted its military weight from Gaza to Lebanon, which has seen daily Israeli strikes against mainly Hezbollah targets.
Indeed, the attack on Friday night into Saturday on Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut was the most prominent. It was precisely in this attack that Hassan Nasrallah, the top leader of the Shiite party and militia for the past 32 years, was eliminated. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) pointed out that Hezbollah's headquarters were located under residential buildings, which, according to the IDF, proves that the extremist group uses the Lebanese population as human shields and its buildings as weapons warehouses, something denied by the Lebanese organisation.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced that 105 people were killed and 359 wounded as a result of the Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory on Sunday. This is in addition to the 33 killed and 195 wounded on Saturday, according to the Lebanese Ministry.
The IDF offensive against Hamas and Hezbollah continues. The military operation was launched in response to the horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli territory on 7 October, which left around 1,200 people dead and 250 kidnapped.
Following these terrible events, the Israeli army launched both an air and ground military operation in the Gaza Strip against the Palestinian armed group, which is still ongoing and has left tens of thousands of people dead. International criticism followed, especially from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel's main regional rival, and from pro-Iranian Shiite groups sympathetic to the Ayatollahs' regime. Hezbollah, a Shiite party and militia (the branch of Islam that Iran represents in the Middle East) responded by attacking Israel in defence of the Palestinian people, and the Israeli state also responded by bombing Lebanon with the aim of killing Hezbollah leaders.
The Israeli Air Force managed to eliminate leaders of the pro-Iranian Lebanese group such as Hassan Nasrallah, its top leader, Ali Karki, commander of Hezbollah's Southern Front, Hassan Khalil Yassine, a senior member of the group's intelligence, and Nabil Qaouk, a member of the Lebanese Shiite group's Central Council.
As for Hamas, the most prominent target for elimination was leader Ismael Haniyeh, who was killed in an Israeli military and intelligence operation in Iran during the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, among other leaders killed. Now it was the turn of Fatah Sharif Abu Al-Amin, the top leader of the Palestinian armed group in Lebanon.
