Israeli military says it killed Hamas official in southern Lebanon

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Israeli military on Monday killed a Hamas leader in southern Lebanon's Sidon area, it said in a statement.

The army said Muhammad Shaheen was the head of the operations department of Hamas in Lebanon and that he had recently been involved in promoting "terrorist plots" with Iranian direction and funding from Lebanese territory against Israeli citizens.

An Israeli strike on a car in Lebanon's southern port city of Sidon targeted an official in the Palestinian militant group, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters earlier.

Lebanon's state news agency said rescuers had removed one body from the car but did not identify the victim.

The Israeli military has been carrying out strikes against members of Hamas, allied Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and other factions in Lebanon, in parallel with the Gaza war.

Those armed groups have launched rockets, drones and artillery attacks across the border into northern Israel.

Under a truce brokered by Washington in November, Israeli troops were granted 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon where they had waged a ground offensive against fighters from Iran-backed Hezbollah since early October.

That deadline was later extended to February 18, but Israel's military requested that it keep troops in five posts in southern Lebanon, sources told Reuters last week.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut and Tala Ramadan in Dubai; writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Alison Williams and Ed Osmond)

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