Hezbollah vows revenge for a Hamas chief killed in Beirut; IDF ‘at very high readiness’

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh declared the Gaza-ruling terror group would not be deterred after his deputy Saleh al-Arouri was killed Tuesday in an alleged Israeli strike in Beirut, while Lebanon’s Hezbollah vowed the “crime” would not go unpunished and launched several cross-border attacks on northern Israel.

“A movement whose leaders and founders fall as martyrs for the dignity of our people and our nation will never be defeated,” Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in the Qatari capital of Doha, said in a televised address.

Haniyeh, who is considered a top target for Israel after the Hamas-led October 7 atrocities in southern Israel, vowed the targeted killing would increase Hamas’s “strength, toughness, and unyielding determination.”

Arouri, wanted for years by Israel and seen as the group’s prime orchestrator of West Bank terrorism, was killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, officials with Hamas and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah said.

Hamas, in a statement eulogizing Arouri and confirming the identities of five other members who were killed with him, called it a “cowardly assassination operation, carried out by the Zionist enemy, in a barbaric aggression and a heinous crime.” READ MORE