Daily Times

An Israeli airstrike on a car deep inside Lebanon killed a senior figure from Palestinian armed group Hamas on Friday evening, a Hamas source and two other security sources told Reuters amid fears of regional escalation.

The strike, on the southern edges of the Lebanese port city of Sidon some 60 kilometers (nearly 40 miles) from the frontier, killed Samer Al-Hajj, a Hamas security official who works in the nearby refugee camp for Palestinians, Ain Al-Hilweh. His bodyguard was critically wounded, the three sources said.

The Israeli military has been carrying out strikes against members of Hamas, allied Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and other factions in Lebanon over the last 10 months, in parallel with the Gaza war.

Those armed groups have launched rockets, drones and artillery attacks across the border into northern Israel.

While most of the hostilities have been limited to the strip of border between Israel and Lebanon, Israeli strikes targeting senior figures in Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups have taken place further north.

An Israeli strike on the outskirts of Beirut in January killed Hamas’s deputy chief Saleh Arouri. Another Israeli strike on the same area last week killed Hezbollah’s top military commander Fuad Shukr.

Hours after Shukr was killed, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. Iran and its allies in the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas, have blamed Israel and vowed retaliation.

Separately, Hamas decried the killing of Tamim Abu Muammar and Abdullah al-Suwaisi, who were killed earlier in the day in Gaza.

The two journalists were killed alongside several family members in Israeli attacks on their homes in the southern city of Khan Younis. Their killing is a “new crime in a long series of crimes committed by the Zionist occupation against Palestinian journalists with the aim of stifling voices … that cover the genocide in Gaza”, Hamas said in a statement. The group called on the UN and the international community to hold Israel accountable.

Meanwhile, White House spokesperson John Kirby says the Biden administration will not allow “extremists”, including in Israel, to push Gaza ceasefire talks off course.

Kirby also accused Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of making false claims.

He said Smotrich’s claim that a ceasefire deal would amount to surrendering to Hamas or that captives should not be exchanged for prisoners is “dead wrong” and accused the minister of misleading the Israeli public.