☠Car bomb against Hamas cadre Mohammad Hamdan in Sidon; Ahmad Baytiyeh arrested

On 14 January 2018 a bomb planted under the seat of the car of Mohammad Hamdan, a member of Hamas's security apparatus, exploded in Sidon and wounded him. The interior minister Nouhad Machnouk announced that Israel was behind the operation, and on 23 January Turkey handed over the main suspect Ahmad Baytiyeh, a trader from Tripoli living in Amsterdam who the investigations said headed a Mossad cell that had watched Hamdan for months; about a year later the arrest of a second suspect, who confessed to working for the Mossad since 2014, was announced. Israel denied it.