Israel kills top Palestinian militant as Gaza truce talks stumble

Israel kills Fatah militant Khalil Magdah in Lebanon, sparking fears of regional war, as U.S. pushes for Gaza ceasefire.

Israel killed a senior militant from Fatah’s armed wing Wednesday (August 21, 2024) in a strike on Lebanon, leading to accusations from the Palestinian movement that Israel is trying to “ignite a regional war”.

Fatah, the Palestinian movement based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Khalil Maqdah was killed in a strike near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.

The Israeli military said it targeted the brother of Mounir Maqdah, who heads the Lebanese branch of Fatah's armed wing. It accused them both of "directing attacks and smuggling weapons" to the West Bank and collaborating with Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

In response, the slain militant's Fatah movement, which is headed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and rivals the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers Hamas, accused Israel of bidding to trigger a wider regional war.

Mr. Maqdah's killing marks the first such attack on a senior Fatah member in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement following the Gaza war.

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 AFP in Ramallah.

It came only hours after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken left empty-handed after a tour of the Middle East aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.