Intelligence minister implies Israel wasn’t behind Lebanon car bomb

Intelligence Minister Israel Katz is the only Israeli official to offer on-the-record comments on the car bomb that wounded a top Hamas official in Lebanon earlier today.

In an interview with the right-wing Galei Israel radio station, Katz is asked if Israel had a hand in the bombing. He quips, “If we’d been involved, this wouldn’t have ended with him lightly wounded.”

Mohammad Hamdan was reportedly lightly wounded in the bombing in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, though one medical source contradicted the report and said the wounds were severe.

Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen, affiliated with the Hezbollah terror group, was one of a few media sites that reported Israeli aircraft were in the area of the explosion. Hamas’s political bureau in Lebanon also suggested Israel may have been involved.

“The occupation is the only beneficiary of harming security in Lebanon. We will leave it to the competent security authorities to investigate the explosion that targeted one of our [comrades] in Sidon,” the terror group said, in a statement carried on its Al-Aqsa TV news outlet.