BEIRUT: The Zionist entity’s war against Palestinian militants reached into the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, where a Zionist strike killed Hamas’ 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 the Zionist entity.

A second security official confirmed the information, adding two floors of the targeted building and one car were damaged. Lebanese state media reported the strike hit a Hamas office in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. Hamas TV also said the Zionist entity had killed Aruri in Beirut. And Lebanese media said a total of six people were killed in the strike.

The strike will add to persistent fears that the nearly three-month-old Zionist-Hamas war could become a wider conflagration. The Zionist entity’s relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza has killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children. On Tuesday in Gaza, Zionist forces battled Hamas fighters among the ruins of the heavily-bombed Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s health ministry said 70 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the previous 24 hours during Zionist raids. In the southern city of Khan Yunis, the Zionist entity twice struck the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) headquarters, PRCS said, resulting in “five casualties and three injuries” among displaced people who had sought refuge there and at a nearby hospital. The health ministry in Gaza said four people were killed including an infant.

“They told us to go to the south that is safe, but they are liars,” shouted Fathi Al-Af, pointing to his daughter on a stretcher on the floor of Nasser Hospital after the strike. “The entire Gaza Strip is not safe.” United Nations agencies have voiced alarm over Gaza’s spiraling humanitarian crisis that has left 2.4 million people under siege and bombardment, most of them displaced and crowded into shelters and tents. The World Health Organization has warned of the risk of famine, and disease.

The Zionist army says 173 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza in the battle against Hamas. Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, speaking on Tuesday before Aruri’s death, said Zionist captives will only be freed “on terms set by the resistance”. Aruri, in early December, had said: “The price to pay for the release of Zionist prisoners will be the release of all our prisoners — after a ceasefire.”

Aruri, who lived in exile, is accused by the Zionist entity of masterminding numerous attacks. He was elected deputy to Haniyeh in 2017, before being officially named the group’s number two. In October the Zionist army demolished Aruri’s home in the occupied West Bank. In a televised address Tuesday, Haniyeh also said Hamas is “open to the idea of a national government for the West Bank and Gaza”.

In the West Bank, violence since Oct 7 has surged to a level unseen in nearly two decades. At least 321 Palestinians have been killed by Zionist troops and settlers since the Gaza war began. In the latest clash Tuesday, Zionist forces killed four Palestinians, the health ministry said.

Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair has strongly denied a Zionist 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 the Zionist entity 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. He could also act as a go-between with moderate Arab states about the “voluntary resettlement” of Gazans, it added. Expelling civilians during a conflict or creating unlivable conditions which force them to leave is a war crime.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit organization he set up in 2016, said the report was “a lie”. “The story was published without any contact with Tony Blair or his team. No such discussion has taken place,” it said in a statement on Monday night. “Nor would Tony Blair have such a discussion. The idea is wrong in principle. Gazans should be able to stay and live in Gaza.”

The Palestinian presidency in Ramallah lashed out at the report. The presidency said it would demand that the British government “not allow this meddling with the fate and future of the Palestinian people”. “We also consider Tony Blair to be an unwelcome person in the Palestinian territories,” it said, according to official Palestinian news agency Wafa. The Channel 12 report came after two far-right Zionist government ministers called for Jewish settlers to return to the Gaza Strip after the war with Hamas, and said Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate. The ministers’ comments drew condemnation from Hamas.