SIDON: Israel killed a senior commander of the Palestinian movement Fatah in Lebanon on Wednesday, accusing him of orchestrating attacks in the West Bank.
In response, the slain Fatah party accused Israel of seeking to “ignite a regional war”.
Khalil Maqdah was killed in a missile strike on his car in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, according to Fatah and a Lebanese security source.
The Israeli military said an air force “aircraft struck the terrorist Khalil Hussein Khalil Al-Maqdah in the area of Sidon in southern Lebanon.”
The military said Maqdah was the brother of Mounir Maqdah, who heads the Lebanese branch of Fatah’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and accused them both of “directing terror attacks and smuggling weapons” to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
It alleged that the pair “collaborate on behalf of” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The attack marks the first such reported attack on a senior member of Fatah, the movement led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement following the Gaza war.
Fatah said Maqdah had been killed “in a cowardly assassination carried out by … Zionist (Israeli) warplanes on Sidon”, describing him as “one of the leaders” of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Lebanon, the movement’s armed wing.
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In a statement, it said Maqdah had “a central role” in “supporting the Palestinian people and its resistance” during the Gaza war and an “important role in supporting resistance cells” for years in the West Bank.
A senior Fatah official in the West Bank city of Ramallah accused Israel of killing him in order to spark a regional war.
The “assassination of a Fatah official is further proof that Israel wants to ignite a full-scale war in the region,” Tawfiq Tirawy, a member of Fatah’s central committee, told AFP in Ramallah.
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Maqdah was killed in a strike on a car, said Fathi Abu al-Aradat, a senior Lebanon-based member of the group that rivals Gaza’s Palestinian rulers Hamas.
A Lebanese security source and Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported the same information.
An AFP correspondent at the site of the attack said a car was struck near the Palestinian refugee camps of Ain al-Helweh and Mieh Mieh, adding that rescuers had pulled a body from the charred vehicle.
Dozens of angry Fatah supporters gathered inside the Ain al-Helweh camp, the AFP correspondent said, adding gunshots were fired in the air.
Hezbollah and its allies have exchanged regular fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.
The violence has killed some 593 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 130 civilians, according to AFP’s tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Fatah has not announced any attacks on Israel from Lebanon since clashes began nor had it mourned members killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon.
Hamas and Fatah have been bitter rivals since Hamas fighters ejected Fatah from the Gaza Strip after deadly clashes that followed Hamas’s resounding victory in a 2006 election.
Fatah controls the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
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