BEIRUT, March 13 (Reuters) – An Israeli drone strike on a car outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Wednesday killed a member of Hamas from the nearby Palestinian camp of Rashidieh, Israeli and Hamas officials said.
A Hamas source, speaking to Reuters, identified the member as Hadi Mustafa but said he was not a senior figure. Hamas’s Al Aqsa television said Mustafa was a leader of the group’s armed wing.
The Israeli military confirmed it had killed Mustafa in southern Lebanon and called him a “significant” Hamas operative, alleging he was responsible for attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.
ANALYSIS: Israel’s Killing of Hezbollah, Hamas Leaders Won’t Reduce Threat
Two security sources said a Syrian man who was passing by on his motorcycle was also killed in the strike, after earlier saying that the two fatalities had been in Mustafa’s car.
All three sources said the drone, which they identified as Israeli, hovered in the air above the site of the strike for several minutes after it was carried out.
Hamas, the Palestinian faction that carried out a deadly incursion into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, also has a political and military presence in Lebanon, largely based in camps where Palestinian refugees have lived for decades.
Lebanese armed group Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in October in support of Hamas. Since then, Israel has been carrying out strikes in Lebanon, mostly confined to the border region but increasingly spreading further north and east.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily,Laila Bassam and Henriette Chacar; editing by Christina Fincher and Ros Russell)
