Anadolu Agency
A senior Hamas leader, Samer al-Hajj, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on Friday, August 9, 2024, the Palestinian group confirmed.
In a statement, Hamas mourned al-Hajj, calling him a "martyred commander" who "fell in a treacherous Zionist attack in Sidon this afternoon."
Earlier on Friday, Lebanon's official news agency reported that an Israeli drone had fired two missiles at a four-wheel drive vehicle near the Hisbeh roundabout in Sidon, targeting al-Hajj, who was inside the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp.
The agency added that the strike resulted in al-Hajj's death and injuries to other civilians present at the scene.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, in a statement, confirmed that two individuals, a Palestinian and a Lebanese citizen, sustained minor injuries in the attack and received treatment at a local hospital.
Sidon, a major city in southern Lebanon, is densely populated and home to several Palestinian refugee camps on its outskirts.
Since October 8, 2023, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, most notably Hezbollah, have been engaged in daily cross-border shelling with the Israeli army along the "Blue Line" border. The clashes have resulted in hundreds of casualties, primarily on the Lebanese side.
The factions have conditioned a ceasefire on Israel's end to its ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, which began on October 7 and has left over 131,000 Palestinians dead or injured, mostly children and women, and over 10,000 missing. This constitutes one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
These events come amidst heightened tensions as Israel awaits retaliatory actions from Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas following the assassinations of Hamas' political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31 and senior Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukr in Beirut the previous day.