BEIRUT: An Israeli drone strike on eastern Lebanon on Sunday targeted a Hamas official, but he “escaped” the attempted killing, according to a Lebanese security source.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said on Monday the strike near the village of Suwairi, in Bekaa Valley, killed a Syrian civilian in his vehicle.

The security source said the Hamas official was travelling along the same road.

“A Hamas official was targeted by the Israeli drone attack on Sunday but escaped,” said the source, without naming the official.

Israeli forces along the country’s northern border with Lebanon have exchanged near-daily fire with Hezbollah since October.

The strike in the Suwairi area, near Lebanon’s border with Syria, was the first Israeli attack there since the Gaza crisis unfolded nearly six months ago.

On Jan 2, a strike widely blamed on Israel killed Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh al Aruri in a southern Beirut suburb that is a Hezbollah stronghold.

According to another security source, pre-dawn Israeli strikes on Sunday wounded four people, including a Hezbollah member, in Baalbek, further north in the Bekaa Valley.

The cross-border violence since early October has killed 326 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also 57 civilians.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence in Lebanon’s south.-

Published in Dawn, March 26th, 2024