Six dead in airstrike on Jenin, Palestinian health ministry reports, as Israel said its aircraft fired on militants who had attacked troops
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Peter Beaumont is in Beirut, where the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, has prompted fears of the war spilling over into Lebanon. You can read full report here, which includes powerful reportage from the city.
This is an extract of his analysis of the current fears for conflict spreading further in the region:
[fear of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel] has dominated debate in Lebanon and the wider region in the days since Arouri’s killing, even as a tenuous normality has returned to Beirut’s sprawling southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, in wake of the attack. While streets that emptied in the immediate aftermath of the strike have become busy again, anxiety lingers. The mood was summed up by Lebanon’s outgoing prime minister, Najib Mikati, who on Friday talked of “the danger of attempts to drag Lebanon into a regional war … with serious consequences, particularly for Lebanon and neighbouring countries”.On Saturday morning, as Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel, saying the barrage was only its first response to Arouri’s killing, Mikati’s warning took on an added resonance. The cross-border exchanges have highlighted the fact that, three months on, Israel’s war against Hamas is starting to bleed ever wider across the region.
Since 8 October, limited exchanges across the border – including airstrikes and drone attacks – have become a daily occurrence between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as other factions in Lebanon, inflicting casualties on both sides. Iran-backed groups in Iraq have stepped up attacks on US military bases, while Yemen’s Houthis – who, like Hamas and Hezbollah, have long enjoyed Iranian support – have launched long-range drones and threatened commercial shipping around key routes in the Red Sea. Last week, Islamic State claimed responsibility for two blasts which ripped through a crowd in southern Iran, killing at least 84 people, while a US airstrike in Baghdad killed the commander of an Iranian-backed Shia militia.