The Lebanese Hezbollah movement has vowed to respond to Israel’s killing of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut.

“We affirm that this crime will never pass without response and punishment,” the Lebanese armed group said in a statement on Tuesday evening, local time.

“We consider the crime of killing Saleh al-Arouri and his companions in the heart of Beirut’s Dahiyeh a dangerous aggression against Lebanon and its people, security, sovereignty and resistance.”

Hezbollah added that the killing of Arouri, which happened with a drone strike that also killed two commanders of the al-Qassam Brigades, was a “serious assault on Lebanon” and that it has “its finger on the trigger”.

“The criminal enemy – which after ninety days of crime, killing and destruction was unable to subjugate Gaza – is resorting to a policy of assassination,” Hezbollah said.

A drone strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday.

Al-Arouri, 57, was the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau and one of the founders of the group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades.

He had been living in exile in Lebanon after spending 15 years in an Israeli jail. Before the war began on October 7, Israeli PM Netanyahu had threatened to kill him.