Hamas announced a freeze on ceasefire negotiations with Israel after the faction's deputy chief, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed Tuesday evening in an Israeli attack in Lebanon, a Palestinian source told Xinhua.
"We have informed the brothers in Qatar and Egypt of the freezing of negotiations," the source said on condition of anonymity. Qatar and Egypt have been mediating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The source added that Hamas, at war with Israel, rejected any talks about reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip amid escalated Israeli aggression and "assassination schemes" against Palestinian leaders.
Earlier, a Hamas source told Xinhua that several aides of al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas politburo, were also killed in the Israeli attack targeting a Hamas office in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sees the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut as a worrying development, said a UN spokesperson on Tuesday.
ReplyDelete"Obviously, the developments are extremely worrying. And I think this just really highlights what the secretary-general had just said about the dangers of the spillover of this (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict in the wider region," said Florencia Soto Nino, associate spokesperson for Guterres.
"The secretary-general urges all parties to exercise maximum restraint and take urgent steps to de-escalate tensions in the region," she said.