Israel assassinates Hamas official in Lebanon

BEIRUT: Israel killed on Monday a Hamas leader in southern Lebanon’s Sidon area, the Israeli military and a Hamas official said.

The military said Muhammad Shaheen was the head of the operations department of Hamas in Lebanon and that he had recently been involved in promoting plots with Iranian direction and funding from Lebanese territory against Israeli citizens.

A Hamas official confirmed Shaheen’s killing to Reuters

An Israeli strike on a car in Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon targeted an official in the Palestinian militant group, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters earlier.

Lebanon’s state news agency said rescuers had removed one body from the car but did not identify the victim.

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

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

Under a truce brokered by Washington in November, Israeli troops were granted 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon where they had waged a ground offensive against fighters from Iran-backed Hezbollah since early October.

That deadline was later extended to February 18, but Israel’s military requested that it keep troops in five posts in southern Lebanon, sources told Reuters last week.

Hamas ministry says Israel strike kills three policemen in Gaza

Earlier, Hamas said an Israeli strike on Sunday killed three police officers near the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a day after Israel and militants carried out a hostage-prisoner swap.

The Hamas-run interior ministry initially reported that two officers were killed and a third was critically wounded in a strike while they were deployed in the Al-Shouka area, east of Rafah, to secure aid.

The third officer later succumbed to his wounds, the ministry said in an updated statement.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force struck “several armed individuals moving toward troops in the southern Gaza Strip”.