Palestinian militant group Hamas has announced that its leader in Lebanon has been killed by Israeli air strikes as hundreds of IDF tanks line up along the border.
Now fears are mounting about a potential ground invasion by Israel that could plunge the Middle East into an all-out war – as it was revealed 1 million people in Lebanon have now been displaced from their homes.
Hamas said its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sharif Abu al-Amine, died today in a strike on the Al-Buss refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre – days after Hezbollah’s long-standing chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut.
The group said al-Amine was killed with his wife, son and daughter in what it called a ‘terrorist and criminal assassination’.
That statement came hours after the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular left-wing group, said three of its members were killed in a strike on Beirut’s Kola district early today.
Most of Israel’s attacks against Hezbollah have so far been carried out in the south of Lebanon or Beirut’s southern suburbs.
But this morning’s attack in the Kola district was the first within Beirut’s city limits – another escalation that observers fear could could trigger a wider war, dragging in Iran and the United States.
Meanwhile, the US and other members of the international community this weekend issued an 11th-hour appeal for restraint.
READ ALSO – HUNDREDS of Israeli tanks at the border with Lebanon amid fears of imminent ground invasion
US WARNS ISRAEL
President Joe Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an all-out war in the Middle East must be avoided, even as the US military ramps up its presence in the region.
NUMBER OF CASUALTIES SO FAR…
More than 1,030 people – including 156 women and 87 children – have been killed in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, since Israel stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah.
The airstrike in the Kola district hit a multistory residential building and caused massive damage.
