Thousands of people have attended a funeral for the deputy leader of Hamas who was killed in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The assassination has sparked fresh fears of a regional escalation with both Hamas and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah vowing retaliation on Israel. Our middle east correspondent Allyson Horn has more from Jerusalem.
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00:00 It was earlier this week that the deputy leader of Hamas, Salah al-Aruri, was killed in southern
00:08 Beirut, a stronghold of the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah, in an apparent Israeli airstrike.
00:15 In Beirut, thousands have attended his funeral in a show of defiance and unity against Israel.
00:22 The Jewish state has neither confirmed nor denied that it assassinated the Hamas leader.
00:28 But the attack in Beirut has sparked fears of a major escalation between Israel and Hezbollah,
00:34 which until this stage has been supporting Hamas with small cross-border fire on the
00:39 Israel-Lebanon border.
00:41 Hezbollah officials attended al-Aruri's funeral after their leader promised there'd be retaliation
00:47 on Israel, which Hamas has also promised.
00:52 The path of jihad and resistance is not without sacrifices, and martyrdom is the aspiration
00:57 and hope of every fighter walking this path.
01:00 This aggression will be met with a strong response from the resistance, one proportional
01:04 to the heinous crime committed by the Zionist enemy, with all the power at its disposal
01:09 and its supporters.
01:10 And inside Gaza, airstrikes have intensified in the south, including accusations that Israel
01:16 has carried out several strikes in Rafa, an area that it had declared a so-called safe
01:22 zone.
01:23 Israel hasn't commented on the explosions.
01:26 The Gaza Ministry of Health says the Palestinian death toll is now more than 22,000 people.
01:32 That's almost 1% of Gaza's total population.
01:36 And as this war is nearing the three-month mark, there is growing concern that hostilities
01:41 are spreading beyond Gaza and Israel, to the West Bank, Lebanon and the Red Sea, the entirety
01:49 of the Middle East region on increasingly high alert.
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