News - Middle East: Lebanon is set to lodge a complaint against Israel at the United Nations Security Council after the assassination of the deputy head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement in a drone strike on the southern suburb of the country’s capital city of Beirut.

Following the Tuesday assassination, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati contacted Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib and ordered an urgent complaint to the 15-member council due to the violation of the country’s sovereignty by Israel.

“The strike is an Israeli crime that clearly aims to bring Lebanon into a new phase of confrontations after the ongoing daily attacks in the south,” Mikati said.

He said that the strike showed that Israel was resorting to exporting its failures in Gaza, adding it had a clear implication for Lebanon in confounding “efforts to remove the specter of war from the country.”

Arouri was killed on Tuesday in a “treacherous Zionist strike” on Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, Hamas announced on its official channel.

Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq called it a “cowardly assassination.”

Arouri was a senior official in Hamas’s politburo and was known to be deeply involved in its military affairs. He had previously headed the group’s presence in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas vows 'crushing response'

Meanwhile, Hamas has vowed to deliver a crushing response to Israel over the the assassination of its senior official Saleh al-Arouri in a drone strike on southern Beirut.

“The crime of assassinating Arouri will be met with an appropriate response from the Palestinian people and resistance factions. All scenarios are open in the aftermath of the murder,” Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon and also a member of the group’s politburo, stated early on Wednesday.

He also criticized the “hypocritical” reactions of some international institutions to the targeted killing.

“We call upon Western countries to take effective measures aimed at stopping the [Zionist] occupiers’ crimes against the Palestinian nation,” Hamdan said.

The senior Hamas official also lashed out at the United States for providing the Israeli regime a cover to forge ahead with its bloody onslaught in the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that Arouri’s assassination falls within such backing.

“Washington’s allegation that it knew nothing about Arouri’s assassination is simply an attempt to escape from political responsibility,” Hamdan added.

Islamic Jihad chief: Arouri martyred on path to glorify Palestine, resistance

Ziad al-Nakhalah, secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement, also stated that high-profile Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was assassinated by Israel as he was treading the path towards glorification of the Palestinian nation and its resistance front.

“Arouri was among disguised and prominent Palestinian leaders. We lost him, and his absence is felt deep within our souls. He was a leader that encouraged everyone around him to trust and believe in themselves,” Nakhalah noted.

The Islamic Jihad chief underscored that Arouri was martyred on the path destined to the veneration of Palestinians and resistance factions, something what is now on showcase in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and across the region.

Yemen: Assassination exposes Israel's defeat

Abdulaziz bin Habtoor, prime minister of Yemen’s National Salvation Government, also strongly condemned the assassination.

Bin Habtoor, in a message of condolences, expressed solidarity on behalf of the Yemeni people and resistance forces with the bereaved family of Arouri and Hamas.

He underscored that the targeted killing is truly indicative of Israel’s terrorist behavior, and clearly manifests the state of defeat and anguish that it is experiencing.

The Israeli regime launched its devastating war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after the territory’s Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.

The Israeli military has also been carrying out attacks against the Lebanese territory since then, prompting retaliatory strikes from Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah in support of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

The movement has vowed to keep up its retaliatory operations as long as the regime continues its onslaught on Gaza.

The relentless Israeli war against Gaza has killed at least 21,978 people, most of them women and children. Another 57,697 individuals have also been wounded.

The regime has largely cut off access to water, food and power supplies to Gaza.

Source: Press TV

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