Beirut, Lebanon – A drone strike in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon has killed an official from Fatah, the movement led by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

State media and Palestinian officials in Lebanon said Israel had carried out the attack.

“The Israeli strike in Sidon killed (Fatah) group official Khalil (al-) Makdah,” said Fathi Abu al-Aradat, a senior member of the political party.

There have been no previous attacks on Fatah in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

A Lebanese security source confirmed the report to AFP, saying the strike hit his car.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said Makdah was killed ‘in a drone strike on his car’.

Mounir al-Makdah, who heads the Lebanese branch of Fatah’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, confirmed that his brother Khalil had been killed.

He told the broadcaster Al-Mayadeen that his brother had been a commander in the brigade.

Israeli confirms attack

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it targeted a commander in the armed wing of the Palestinian Fatah movement, describing him as having worked for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

“Earlier today… an air force aircraft targeted Khalil al-Maqdah in the Sidon area of southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.

It claimed that Maqdah and his brother worked for Iran in ‘directing attacks and transferring funds and weapons to terrorist infrastructure’ in the occupied West Bank.

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 the AFP news agency.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said on Wednesday that two people were killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.

One Lebanese person was killed in a strike targeting a vehicle in the village of Beit Lif, while a Syrian person was killed in another strike in the village of Wazzani, the Lebanese state news agency NNA cited the ministry as saying.

Hezbollah said it struck an Israeli base in the occupied Golan Heights in retaliation. The group reportedly launched over 50 rockets, hitting several private residences.

Since October 7, Israel and Hezbollah have traded almost daily cross-border fire, with over 500 killed in Lebanon, including some 100 civilians and non-combatants. The fighting has also killed 23 soldiers and 26 civilians in Israel.

DW