Mass Funeral for Saleh Al-Arouri, Deputy Chairman of Hamas Politburo
(AWP) - Thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese mourners attended the funeral of Saleh al-Arouri, Deputy Chairman of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Political Bureau, as well as his escorts, in Beirut on Thursday. They were killed in a strike on a Hamas office in the Lebanese capital on January 2, which the movement attributed to Israel.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said that mourners performed funeral prayers at the Imam Aly Mosque, with the participation of representatives of Palestinian factions and Lebanese parties and movements.
Gatherings of people from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon assembled for the funeral, during which participants raised Palestinian flags and banners of factions, including those of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement, as well as pictures of the dead.
The mourners carried the caskets of Arouri and his escorts, and marched towards Martyrs Cemetery in Shatila with extensive gunfire shot into the air, and chants attacking Israel and supporting the Palestinian factions.
Aly Faisal, a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Political Council, said that this cowardly operation by the Israeli occupation army is a crime of terrorism and war that is meant to break the will of the Palestinian resistance.
“This will never happen. On the contrary, this operation will ignite this conflict and the fire of resistance all over the region and throughout the Palestinian people,” he added.
“The cause of the martyrs is being enhanced day after day, and the struggle will go on until this occupation and aggression come to an end, and the Greater Middle East scheme the United States and Israel are trying to enact in this region is vanquished. These cowardly operations are only the outcome of the U.S. and Israeli failure to achieve their objectives in this area,” stressed Faisal.
Hamas had earlier announced the killing of Arouri as well as Samir Findi and Azzam Al-Aqra, two leading members of its military wing, the Ezz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and four other members in a drone strike that targeted an office of the movement in Beirut on Tuesday.