A look at killings of militant leaders believed targeted by Israel

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hamas and Hezbollah have accused Israel of carrying out an airstrike that killed a top Hamas leader in Beirut.

While Israel has not claimed responsibility, Tuesday’s airstrike had the hallmarks of an Israeli attack.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have repeatedly threatened to kill Hamas leaders following the group’s deadly Oct. 7 cross-border attack that sparked the war in Gaza.

Israel also has a long history of assassinating its enemies, many carried out with precision airstrikes. A look at some of those targeted killings:

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December 2023

Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, is killed in a drone attack outside of Damascus. Iran blames Israel.

2019

An Israeli airstrike hits the home of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the Gaza Strip, killing him and his wife.

2012

Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’ armed wing, is killed when an airstrike targets his car. His death sparks an eight-day war between Hamas and Israel.

2010

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas operative, is killed in a Dubai hotel room in an operation attributed to the Mossad spy agency but never acknowledged by Israel. Many of the 26 supposed assassins were caught on camera disguised as tourists.

2008

Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military chief, was killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded in Damascus. Mughniyeh was accused of engineering suicide bombings during Lebanon’s civil war and of planning the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. Hezbollah blamed his killing on Israel. His son Jihad Mughniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike in 2015.

2004

Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin is killed in an Israeli helicopter strike while being pushed in his wheelchair. Yassin, paralyzed in a childhood accident, was among the founders of Hamas in 1987. His successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, is killed in an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.

2002

Hamas’s No. 2 military leader Salah Shehadeh is killed by a bomb dropped on an apartment building.

1997

Mossad agents tried to kill then-Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal in Amman, Jordan. Two agents entered Jordan using fake Canadian passports and poisoned Mashaal by placing a device near his ear. They were captured shortly afterward. Jordan’s then-King Hussein threatened to void a still-fresh peace accord if Mashaal died. Israel ultimately dispatched an antidote, and the Israeli agents were returned home. Mashaal remains a senior figure in Hamas.

1996

Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed the “engineer” for his mastery in building bombs for Hamas, is killed by answering a rigged phone in Gaza. His assassination triggered a series of deadly bus bombings in Israel.

1995

Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shikaki is shot in the head in Malta in an assassination widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

1988

Palestine Liberation Organization military chief Khalil al-Wazir is killed in Tunisia. Better known as Abu Jihad, he had been PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s deputy. Military censors cleared an Israeli paper to reveal details of the Israeli raid for the first time in 2012.

1973

Israeli commandos shoot a number of PLO leaders in their apartments in Beirut, in a nighttime raid led by Ehud Barak, who later became Israel’s top army commander and prime minister. His team killed Kamal Adwan, who was in charge of PLO operations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Mohammed Youssef Najjar, a member of the PLO’s executive committee, and Kamal Nasser, a PLO spokesman and charismatic writer and poet. The operation was part of a string of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders in retaliation for the killings of 11 Israeli coaches and athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

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