Israel assassinated senior Hamas official Hassan Ahmad Farhat on Friday, April 4. At 3:05 am, Lebanese media outlets reported an Israeli airstrike in the city of Sidon in the south Lebanon Governorate’s Saida District. The strike targeted the fourth floor of a seven-story apartment building opposite Dallaa Hospital in Sidon’s Zuhour neighborhood.
Reports soon emerged that the strike had killed Farhat, whose nom de guerre was Abu Yasser. Alongside him, the Israeli strike killed his son Hamzah, who Hamas’s Qassam Brigades later identified as “a martyred mujahid of the Qassam [Brigades],” and Farhat’s daughter, Jinan.
The IDF’s statement on Farhat’s assassination identified him as the “commander of the western sector of Hamas’ forces in Lebanon.” Official Qassam Brigades sources also identified him as a “martyred commander of the Qassam [Brigades].”
The IDF said Farhat was responsible for “advancing many terror initiatives” against Israeli forces and civilians during the recent Israel-Lebanon war, including a February 14, 2024, rocket barrage on the northern Israeli city of Tzfat that killed one Israeli soldier, Omer Sarah Benjo, and wounded eight others. The IDF also claimed Farhat “was busy advancing terror plots against the State of Israel also in recent months,” after the November 27 Lebanon-Israel ceasefire went into effect.
Farhat was also the father-in-law of Mohammad Bashasha, who was killed alongside Saleh Al Arouri in a January 2, 2024 Israeli airstrike. It is unclear if Jinan was Bashasha’s widow.
The Lebanese prime minister’s office issued a statement condemning the Israeli strike on Farhat, saying it came on a “peaceful night” and constituted a “blatant aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and [a] clear violation of [UN Security Council] Resolution 1701” and the November 27 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire deal. The statement said Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called for “applying the highest levels of pressure against Israel to force it to cease the ongoing acts of aggression that reach all [Lebanese] areas, including residential ones.”
