Wars 2023 10/08 Monitoring the Israel and Lebanon War

[Saif]

Israel strikes Hezbollah bastion in south Beirut

Lebanese state media reported on Wednesday a third wave of Israeli raids on Hezbollah’s south Beirut bastion in 24 hours, after the health ministry said another strike south of the capital killed six people...

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Israel strikes Hezbollah bastion in south Beirut
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 14 November, 2024, 04:12

Lebanese state media reported on Wednesday a third wave of Israeli raids on Hezbollah’s south Beirut bastion in 24 hours, after the health ministry said another strike south of the capital killed six people.

‘Enemy aircraft targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs’, the official National News Agency said, reporting six strikes.

AFP TV footage showed plumes of black smoke rising over the area following the strikes, about an hour after Israel’s army issued evacuation warnings.

People hastily drove away from the area following the evacuation calls, with residents firing gunshots in the air to warn civilians to flee, an AFP photographer said.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli strike on Aramoun south of Beirut killed six people, Lebanon’s health ministry said giving a preliminary toll for the attack on the densely-packed area which is located outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.

‘Body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified,’ it added, after the NNA said the strike targeted a residential apartment at dawn.

An AFP photographer saw rescuers pulling bodies out of the rubble in Aramoun, where the four-storey building had partially collapsed.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian group allied with Hamas released a video on Wednesday of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7 attack.

In the video, a bearded man identifying himself as Sasha Trupanov spoke in Hebrew about Israeli military operations in Lebanon, and called on Israelis to put pressure on the government to secure the release of hostages.

Trupanov, who stated in the video he was 28 and who recently turned 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza Strip.

Trupanov’s mother, grandmother and girlfriend, also abducted during Hamas’s October 7 attack, were among those released during a week-long truce in November 2024 in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Trupanov’s father, Vitaly, was killed during the October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history.

‘I am relieved to see my son alive, but I am very worried to hear what he is saying,’ Trupanov’s mother, Lena, said in a statement published by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group.

‘I urge that every effort be made to secure his immediate release and that of all other hostages. They have no time left,’ she added.

This is the third video of Trupanov published by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

Qatar announced on Saturday it would end its mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas after months of fruitless negotiations.

When Hamas militants staged the October 7 attack, they took 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip. Some were already dead.

Of those, 97 are still held hostage, while 34 are confirmed dead but their bodies remain in Gaza.

The war in Gaza erupted with the attack, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,665 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.​

 

[Saif]

Israel hits 30 targets in south Beirut

The Israeli military on Thursday said it struck around 30 targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a bastion of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, over the past 48 hours...

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Israel hits 30 targets in south Beirut
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 15 November, 2024, 00:19

A man walks amid the destruction in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the neighbourhood of Rweiss in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday. Israel’s air force ‘carried out a heavy strike on the southern suburbs targeting the Haret Hreik-Rueis’ area following a series of at least seven Israeli strikes since Wednesday. | AFP photo

The Israeli military on Thursday said it struck around 30 targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a bastion of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, over the past 48 hours.

‘Over the past two days, approximately 30 terror targets were struck in the Dahieh area in Beirut. These strikes were a part of the IDF’s on-going efforts to dismantle and degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities,’ the military said in a statement, weeks after it began on September 23 escalating air raids against the group.

Shortly before the strike, Israel had issued a warning to residents to evacuate their homes.

‘You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests against which the Israeli military will operate in the near future,’ army spokesman Avichay Adraee said.

His post on X included a map identifying buildings in the Shouaifat al-Omrousiya and Ghobeiry areas.

Israel carried out two strikes on Ghobeiry and a large one on Shouaifat al-Omrousiya, which lies on the southern outskirts of Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Repeated Israeli air strikes on south Beirut have led to a mass exodus of civilians, although some return during the day to check on their homes and businesses.

NNA also reported heavy Israeli bombardment of the southern town of Bint Jbeil on Thursday.

Several blocks of flats in the town barely three kilometres from the Israeli border were destroyed by air strikes or shelling, it said.

Meanwhile, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday that at least 43,736 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 103,370 people have also been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

Earlier on Thursday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 10 people were killed in ‘several air strikes’ by the Israeli army on the Palestinian territory.

The agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that ‘around 30 people, all civilians’ were wounded in the strikes in Gaza City, the northern town of Jabalia and the southern city of Rafah.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes pound south, central Beirut

An Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated district of central Beirut yesterday killed Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.

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Israeli strikes pound south, central Beirut
Hezbollah media head killed; new salvo of projectiles fired from Lebanon at Israel’s Haifa area

An Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated district of central Beirut yesterday killed Hezbollah's media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.

The Israeli military declined to comment in response to questions from Reuters. There was no evacuation order for the area published on the Israeli military spokesperson's account on social media platform X before the strike.

The strike hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood where many people displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs by the Israeli bombardment had been seeking refuge.

The security sources said it struck a building where the offices of the Ba'ath Party are located, and the head of the party in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif was in the building.

The broadcaster later also said Afif had been killed.

Earlier, the Israeli air strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut yesterday, AFPTV images showed, shortly after the Israeli military warned people to evacuate the area.

Columns of smoke were seen rising over the capital's southern suburbs, where Lebanon's only international airport is located. Further south, Israeli air strikes and shelling hit the flashpoint town of Khiam, the NNA reported.

Following the bombardment, the Israeli army said about 20 projectiles were seen crossing from Lebanon into Israel, and that some of them were intercepted at Haifa Bay.

Israel has escalated its bombing of Lebanon since September 23 and has since sent in ground troops, following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah militants in support of Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.
​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strike on Beirut kills Hezbollah media head, security sources say

An Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated district of Beirut on Sunday killed Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah. The Israeli military declined to comment in respo

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Israeli strike on Beirut kills Hezbollah media head, security sources say
REUTERS
Published :
Nov 17, 2024 19:07
Updated :
Nov 17, 2024 19:07

The head of Hezbollah’s media office, Mohammad Afif, attends a media gathering protesting against Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon, October 14, 2024. Photo : REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/Files

An Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated district of Beirut on Sunday killed Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.

The Israeli military declined to comment in response to questions from Reuters. There was no evacuation order for the area published on the Israeli military spokesperson’s account on social media platform X before the strike.

The strike hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood where many people displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs by the Israeli bombardment had been seeking refuge.

The security sources said it struck a building where the offices of the Ba’ath Party are located, and the head of the party in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif was in the building.

The broadcaster later also said Afif had been killed. It showed footage of a building whose upper floors had collapsed onto the first storey, with civil defence workers at the scene.

Afif was a long-time media advisor to Hezbollah’s former secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sept 27.

He managed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the Iran-backed group’s media relations office.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire for more than a year, since Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israeli military targets on Oct 8, 2023, a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas carried out a deadly attack on southern Israel.

In late September, Israel dramatically escalated and expanded its military campaign in Lebanon, heavily bombing the country’s south, east and the southern suburbs of Beirut alongside ground incursions along the border.

Afif hosted several press conferences for journalists amid the rubble in the southern suburbs of the capital. In his most recent comments to reporters on Nov 11, he said Israeli troops had been unable to occupy any territory in Lebanon and Hezbollah had enough weapons and supplies to fight a “long war”.

The Lebanese health ministry said the strike killed one and injured three.

Ambulances could be heard rushing to the scene, and bursts of gunfire rang out to prevent crowds of people from approaching the location.​

 

[Saif]

Over 200 children killed in Lebanon in 2 months: Unicef

Over 200 children have been killed and 1,100 injured in Lebanon in the past two months, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency (Unicef) said yesterday.

www.thedailystar.net

Over 200 children killed in Lebanon in 2 months: Unicef
US envoy says end to Israel-Hezbollah war ‘within our grasp’

Over 200 children have been killed and 1,100 injured in Lebanon in the past two months, a spokesperson for the UN children's agency (Unicef) said yesterday.

"The number of over 200 (children killed) is just in the last two months. It's at least 231 since the start of the war last year," James Elder told a Geneva press briefing in response to a reporter's question about casualties.

He did not comment on who was responsible for the killings, saying that it was clear to anyone who follows the media.

Meanwhile, US envoy Amos Hochstein landed in Beirut yesterday for talks with officials on a truce between armed group Hezbollah and Israel. Both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah have agreed to the US ceasefire proposal that was submitted in writing last week.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Hochstein spoke in Beirut following talks with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. "This is a moment of decision-making. I am here in Beirut to facilitate that decision but it's ultimately the decision of the parties to reach a conclusion to this conflict," he said.

"It is now within our grasp... As the window is now, I hope the coming days yield a resolute decision," he added.

The head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, Naim Qassem, has postponed a speech set for yesterday to a later time, Hezbollah's media office said.

The speech had been announced minutes after Hochstein said there was a "real opportunity" to end the conflict.

The Israeli military said yesterday that some 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central and northern Israel, with first responders reporting that four people were slightly injured by shrapnel.

That announcement followed earlier reports that some 15 projectiles fired that set of air raid sirens.

The Israeli police said they were searching the impact sites from projectiles intercepted by Israel's air defence systems but did not report any serious damage.​

 

[Saif]

US envoy says end to Israel-Hezbollah war ‘within grasp’

US special envoy Amos Hochstein said on a visit to Beirut that an end to the Israel-Hezbollah war was ‘now within our grasp’ as he met with officials to discuss a truce plan largely endorsed by Lebanon.

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US envoy says end to Israel-Hezbollah war ‘within grasp’
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 20 November, 2024, 00:45

US special envoy Amos Hochstein said on a visit to Beirut that an end to the Israel-Hezbollah war was ‘now within our grasp’ as he met with officials to discuss a truce plan largely endorsed by Lebanon.

The United States and France have spearheaded efforts for a ceasefire in the war, which escalated in late September after nearly a year of deadly exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli troops.

Israel expanded the focus of its operations from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to secure its northern border to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by the cross-border fire to return home.

Since the clashes began with Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, more than 3,510 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to authorities there. Most of the fatalities have been recorded since late September, including more than 200 children, according to the UN.

Following a meeting on Tuesday with Hezbollah-allied parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation on behalf of the group, Hochstein told reporters he saw ‘a real opportunity’ to end the Israel-Hezbollah war.

‘Im here in Beirut to facilitate that decision, but it’s ultimately the decision of the parties it is now within our grasp,’ he added.

The leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, was expected to give a speech later on Tuesday.

A Lebanese official who has been following the truce talks closely had said on Monday that his government had ‘a very positive view’ of the plan.

Another official said Lebanon had been waiting for Hochstein’s arrival ‘so we can review certain outstanding points with him’.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would continue to conduct military operations against Hezbollah even if a ceasefire was reached.

‘The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be laid on paper,’ Netanyahu told parliament.

‘We will be forced to ensure our security in the north of Israel and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks even after a ceasefire’, to keep the group from rebuilding, he said.

Netanyahu also said there was no evidence Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire.

Hezbollah began its cross-border attacks on Israel in support of its ally Hamas, following the Palestinian group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Hamas’s attack — the deadliest in Israeli history — resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the war has reached 43,972 people, a majority of them civilians. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.

Since expanding its operations to Lebanon in September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing campaigns primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds there, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.

A strike on Monday on central Beirut killed five people and wounded 31 others, said the health ministry.

The area of the capital that was hit has in recent weeks become home to many who have fled Hezbollah’s main bastion in the southern suburbs.

The UN said Tuesday that more than 200 children had been killed in Lebanon since Israel escalated its campaign.

‘Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting pattern has emerged: their deaths are met with inertia from those able to stop this violence,’ said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

Israel has also sent ground troops into Lebanon, while Hezbollah has continued to launch projectiles into Israel almost daily.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military said some 40 projectiles were fired into central and northern Israel, lightly wounding four people.

That followed salvos on Monday that killed one woman in Shfaram and injured 10 people there and five in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah said it launched attack drones against ‘sensitive military points in the city of Tel Aviv’ and shot down an Israeli drone in south Lebanon.

The group said on Tuesday it fired a salvo of rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States had shared proposals with both Lebanon and Israel for a ceasefire.

‘Both sides have reacted to the proposals that we have put forward,’ he said.

‘There has been an exchange of different ideas for how to see what we believe is in everyone’s interest, which is the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, and we’re going to continue to stay at that process.’

Under UN Resolution 1701, which ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only armed forces deployed in south Lebanon, where Hezbollah holds sway.

It also called for Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon.

Another Lebanese official said US ambassador Lisa Johnson discussed the plan last week with Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati and with parliamentary speaker Berri.

The official said the proposal comprised ‘13 points spanning five pages’.

If an agreement is reached, the United States and France will issue a joint statement, he said, followed by a 60-day truce during which Lebanon will redeploy troops in the southern border area, near Israel.

However, Eyal Pinko, a retired Israeli navy commander and senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said hopes for a speedy ceasefire were ‘wishful thinking’.

‘The most important thing that is required is that there will be no Hezbollah 30 to 40 kilometres from the border so that Israel can protect itself if there is a ground manoeuver,’ Pinko said.

‘Iran and Hezbollah would not accept that.’

He cautioned that Israel was still ‘very far from’ bringing southern Lebanon under control, and warned of ‘more surprises’ to come.​

 

[Saif]

Israel strikes toppling 11-storey building in Beirut

Israeli air strikes hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold on Friday and crumpled an 11-storey building, official media reported and AFP images showed, after Israeli military evacuation warnings.

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Israel strikes toppling 11-storey building in Beirut
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 23 November, 2024, 00:30

Fire and smoke erupt from a building just after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern Shayah neighbourhood on Friday, amid the on-going war between Israel and Hezbollah. | AFP photo

Israeli air strikes hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold on Friday and crumpled an 11-storey building, official media reported and AFP images showed, after Israeli military evacuation warnings.

The latest raids follow intense Israeli attacks in recent days on south Beirut as well as other areas in Lebanon’s south and east, where Israel says it has been targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.

Israeli strikes on Friday also hit south Lebanon, the National News Agency said, as the Israeli military issued warnings for part of the coastal city of Tyre and swathes of nearby areas, as well as several other locations in the country’s south.

The state-run NNA said Israeli warplanes launched strikes on two buildings just inside Beirut’s southern suburbs, near the centre of the capital.

An AFP photographer captured the moment a missile struck the middle of an 11-storey building housing shops, a gym and apartments, located on a usually busy street in the heavily populated Shiyah district.

The impact sparked a fireball and caused the structure to collapse on top of itself, littering the road with debris.

The NNA reported people fled an adjacent neighbourhood after Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee warned on social media platform X that the military would strike ‘Hezbollah facilities and interests’ in Shiyah.

The NNA earlier Friday reported several other Israeli strikes on south Beirut, adding that ‘thick smoke was seen rising from the vicinity of the Lebanese University’ in the Hadath neighbourhood.

AFPTV footage showed plumes of smoke over the southern suburbs.

The Israeli military said in a statement its ‘fighter jets completed a new round of strikes’ on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The NNA said that for the first time, Israeli troops on Friday entered the village of Deir Mimas, around 2.5 kilometres from the border.

‘Enemy reconnaissance aircraft’ were flying over Deir Mimas, which has been largely emptied of residents, warning people ‘not to leave their homes’, the NNA reported.

Hezbollah said its fighters targeted Israeli troops in the area with rockets and artillery.

The Israeli army has been seeking to advance at several points along the border, most prominently in the town of Khiam, where Hezbollah said it repeatedly attacked troops on Friday.

Israel’s military said on Friday it had killed two commanders involved in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, pressing its north Gaza offensive a day after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants over the war.

The International Criminal Court on Thursday said that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant may bear ‘criminal responsibility’ for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and other crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Hague-based court’s decision drew mixed reactions from world leaders, with some vowing to arrest the Israelis if they entered their country’s territory.

Other leaders, including US president Joe Biden, have condemned the court’s decision which Netanyahu dismissed as ‘absurd’ and ‘driven by anti-Semitic hatred of Israel’.

Israel has similarly pushed back against accusations of genocide in its war against Hamas, with a case brought before the International Court of Justice in December and, more recently, a report issued by a UN special committee last week.


On the ground in Gaza, the military said an air strike on the territory’s north killed five Hamas militants including two company commanders ‘who participated in the October 7 massacre’ last year.

Medics said dozens were killed or missing after an overnight Israeli raid on Beit Lahia and nearby Jabalia, which are among the targets of a sweeping Israeli assault on north Gaza.

The civil defence agency was not immediately able to provide an exact toll.

Biden, in a statement responding to the ICC’s arrest warrants, called them ‘outrageous’, vowing to ‘always stand with Israel against threats to its security’.

China, which like Israel and the United States is not a member of the ICC, urged the court to ‘uphold an objective and just position’.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that Beijing ‘supports any efforts... that are conducive to achieving fairness and justice’.

The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, accusing him of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity over the attack on Israel that sparked the war, as well as ‘sexual and gender-based violence’ against hostages.

Israel said it killed Deif in July, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas both welcomed the warrants — though without mentioning Deif.

Iran, which backs Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the region, praised the arrest warrants against the Israeli leaders.

‘This means the end and political death of the Zionist regime,’ said Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami.

The ICC’s move theoretically limits the movement of Netanyahu, as any of the court’s 124 national members would be obliged to arrest him on their territory.

But on Friday, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said he would invite Netanyahu to visit and defy the ‘cynical’ and ‘political’ ICC warrant.

The Israeli prime minister, in a video statement, said that ‘no outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us from continuing to defend our country in every way.’

At least 44,056 people have been killed in Gaza in more than 13 months of war, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

It was triggered by the deadliest attack in Israeli history, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

More than 11 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict escalated into all-out war in September, with Israel conducting an extensive bombing campaign and sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least 52 people were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, including some 40 dead in Lebanon’s east, taking its overall death toll since October 2023 to 3,583 people.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill Lebanon hospital chief, 17 others

Lebanon said an Israeli air strike in the heart of Beirut that brought down a residential building and jolted residents across the city killed at least 11 people on Saturday...

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Israeli strikes kill Lebanon hospital chief, 17 others
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 24 November, 2024, 00:05

Lebanon said an Israeli air strike in the heart of Beirut that brought down a residential building and jolted residents across the city killed at least 11 people on Saturday.

Earlier on Friday Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli air strike on Friday killed the director of Dar al-Amal hospital in the east of the country near Baalbek and six of his colleagues.

A ministry statement announced the ‘loss of Dr Ali Rakan Allam, director of Dar al-Amal university hospital, and six colleagues in a cowardly Israeli attack which targeted his residence near the hospital’. It also denounced ‘continual Israeli aggression against medical staff and facilities’.

After the Saturday’s attack, rescue operations were underway in the area in the morning, with an excavator removing the rubble of the eight-storey building, and a fire truck and civil defence rescuers stationed nearby.

The state-run National News Agency said Israeli jets had launched six missiles at the structure, causing ‘widespread destruction in buildings’ nearby.

Lebanon’s health ministry says at least 3,645 people have been killed since October 2023, when Hezbollah began trading fire with Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas. Most of the deaths have been since September this year.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said that 19 people, including at least six children, were killed by Israeli air strikes and tank fire on Saturday.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that ‘19 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded in three massacres caused by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip between midnight and this morning’, as well as by tank fire in Rafah in the territory’s south.

One of the strikes hit a house in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north of the territory, killing seven people, three of them children, and wounding 10.

‘What did these people do?’ said Abdullah Shaldan, a member of the family whose house was destroyed. ‘They were sleeping in their homes -- they are civilians who have nothing to do with Hamas or the resistance.’

AFPTV footage showed people searching the rubble using torches and mobile phones in the darkness, while a young boy desperately cried ‘papa’.

Another strike in the main southern city of Khan Yunis killed six people, including three children, and wounded 26 displaced people who were living in tents near the house that was struck, said Bassal.

In Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, four people were killed in another strike on a house, and in Rafah, along the territory’s southern border, two young men were killed by tank fire, Bassal said.

At least 44,056 people have been killed in Gaza during more than 13 months of war.​

 

[Lulldapull]

The IDF has lost more than a 100 soldiers in S Lebanon over the last 3 weeks and dozens of Merkava tanks. Hundreds of Hezb rockets have also found their mark in Israel causing devastation.

Iran needs to intensify this and conduct a decisive TP-3 attack. Its long overdue.

 

[Saif]

Hezbollah launches attacks on Tel Aviv, south Israel

Israel’s army said Hezbollah fired around 160 projectiles into its territory from Lebanon on Sunday, with the militant group saying its attacks had targeted the Tel Aviv area and Israel’s south...

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Hezbollah launches attacks on Tel Aviv, south Israel
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 24 November, 2024, 23:44

Palestinian boys share a plate of food in their displacement tent at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, amid the on-going war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. | AFP photo

Israel’s army said Hezbollah fired around 160 projectiles into its territory from Lebanon on Sunday, with the militant group saying its attacks had targeted the Tel Aviv area and Israel’s south.

The Iran-backed group said in a statement that it had ‘launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of attack drones on the Ashdod naval base’ in southern Israel.

Later, it said it fired ‘a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of attack drones’ at a ‘military target’ in Tel Aviv, and had also launched a volley of missiles at the Glilot army intelligence base in the city’s suburbs.

The Israeli military did not comment on the specific attack claims when contacted by AFP.

But it said earlier that air raid sirens had sounded in several locations in central and northern Israel, including in the greater Tel Aviv suburbs.

It later reported that ‘approximately 160 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organisation have crossed from Lebanon into Israel’.

Some of the projectiles were shot down.

Medical agencies reported that at least 11 people were wounded, including a man in a ‘moderate to serious’ condition.

AFP images from Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, showed several damaged and burned-out cars, and a house pockmarked by shrapnel.

The wave of projectiles follows at least four deadly Israeli strikes in central Beirut in the past week, including one that killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.

In a speech on Wednesday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem had said the response to the recent strikes on the capital ‘must be expected on central Tel Aviv’.

The Lebanese army, meanwhile, said that a soldier was killed on Sunday and 18 others injured, ‘including some with severe wounds, as a result of an Israeli attack targeting a Lebanese army centre in Amriyeh’.

Though the Lebanese army is not a party to the war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli strikes have killed 19 Lebanese soldiers in the last two months, authorities have said.

Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign, later sending in ground troops after nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack, which sparked the Gaza war.

Lebanon’s health ministry says at least 3,670 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them since September this year.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Sunday a drone strike overnight seriously injured a hospital chief in an attack on the healthcare facility, and 11 people were killed in Israeli raids on the Palestinian territory.

Hossam Abu Safiya heads the Kamal Adwan hospital, one of just two partly operating in northern Gaza, as the war-ravaged territory is in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis.

Abu Safiya suffered an injury to his back and left thigh by metal fragments after an attack on the hospital complex, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

After losing a lot of blood, the doctor was in a ‘stable’ condition, Bassal said, adding an Israeli drone bombed the hospital in Beit Lahia, north Gaza.

Vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping, Israel on October 6 began an air and ground operation in Jabalia and then expanded it to Beit Lahia.

Hospital staff have reported several strikes on the facility, while the World Health Organisation chief said he was ‘deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of 80 patients, including eight in the intensive care unit’ at Kamal Adwan hospital.

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been hit multiple times since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Gaza’s civil defence agency on Sunday morning also said 11 people, ‘including children’, after two Israeli air strikes on Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza and artillery fire in Beit Lahia.

Witnesses also described artillery fire in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.

‘I am afraid,’ said 30-year-old Rania Abu Jazar, after she was forced to leave her makeshift shelter, a tent, in the early hours of the morning after intense fire.

‘My children are hungry and my one-year-old daughter Amal’s milk is in the tent. I do not know what to do. If we return, they might shell us again, the tanks are blind and they do not care about killing children and women,’ she added.​