A large hole is gaping in a three-storey building and debris litters the street amid charred cars in south Beirut where a strike blamed on Israel killed the deputy leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The day after loud blasts ripped through the district from the drone attack that killed Saleh al-Aruri, armed men of Hezbollah were standing guard in the mainly Shiite Muslim area that is their stronghold.
Fears that Israel's war in Gaza could spiral across the Middle East mounted Wednesday after twin explosions ripped through an Iranian crowd, claiming at least 103 lives following a strike in Lebanon that killed Hamas's deputy leader.
More than 200 other people were wounded when the blasts about 15 minutes apart struck mourners commemorating slain Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his killing in a United States drone strike, Iran's state media reported.
Saleh al-Aruri, the senior Hamas official killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Lebanon, played a key role in building up the Palestinian group's military capabilities and its links with regional allies.
Aruri, 57, was one of the founders of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in the early 1990s.
More recently, he was the "channel or link" between the Hamas movement, Iran and Hezbollah, a Hamas source told AFP. He had regularly visited Iran.
The Israeli army has said it is "prepared for any scenario" after a strike in Beirut that killed Hamas's deputy chief, stoking fears the war in the Gaza Strip could boil over into wider regional conflict.
A high-level security official in Lebanon told AFP that Saleh al-Aruri was killed along with his bodyguards in a strike by Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas after the movement's shock October 7 attacks.
A second security official confirmed the information, while Hamas TV also reported Israel had killed Aruri in Lebanon.
The president of Harvard University resigned Tuesday after coming under ferocious attack over plagiarism accusations and her response to anti-Semitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Claudine Gay was criticized in recent months after reports surfaced alleging that she did not properly cite scholarly sources. The most recent accusations came Tuesday, published anonymously in a conservative online outlet.
An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed Saleh al-Aruri, deputy head of the Hamas movement, in a southern Beirut stronghold of Hamas ally Hezbollah, two security officials told AFP.
Hamas later confirmed Aruri's death, which Lebanese state media said came in an Israeli drone strike that killed a total of six people.
Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair has strongly denied an Israeli media report linking him to talks last week about the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza in other countries.
Channel 12 claimed on Sunday that Blair, who left office in 2007 and served as a Middle East envoy charged with building up Palestinian institutions, was in Israel last week.
The news channel said he held meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and war cabinet member Benny Gantz about a mediation role after the war with Hamas.
Israel's war against Palestinian militants reached Lebanon on Tuesday, where an Israeli strike killed Hamas's deputy leader, the group and security officials in Lebanon said.
A high-level security official told AFP that Saleh al-Aruri was killed along with his bodyguards in the strike by Israel, which vowed to destroy Hamas after the movement's unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel.
Turkey announced on Tuesday it had detained 34 people suspected of planning abductions and spying on behalf of Israel's Mossad intelligence service.
The raids came just weeks after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of "serious consequences" should Israel try to target figures from Palestinian militant group Hamas living or working in Turkey.
Turkey does not view Hamas as a terrorist organisation and has hosted the Islamic group's political leaders for much of the past decade.
Israeli troops killed four Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, sources on both sides said, with the army describing the four as "terrorists".
"Four Palestinians were martyred by occupation bullets in the town of Azzun," the Palestinian health ministry said.
The official Wafa news agency said the men were shot dead when clashes erupted as Israeli troops raided the town.
"Israeli occupation soldiers fired live ammunition, stun grenades and tear gas at residents during the raid," the report said.
