Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria | Israeli strikes kill dozens

(Jerusalem) Israel, at war against Hamas and Hezbollah, carried out strikes on Sunday in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon which left dozens dead, including many children, according to Palestinian and Lebanese sources.

The Israeli army seeks to incapacitate the two Islamist movements, after the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and the cross-border fire launched the next day by Lebanese Hezbollah against Israel in support of its Palestinian ally. .

In retaliation for the Hamas attack, it launched a devastating offensive which left tens of thousands dead and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, on Israel’s southern border.

Cross-border firefights between Hezbollah and Israel degenerated into open war on September 23, with a campaign of intense Israeli strikes, mainly against the strongholds of the Lebanese movement.

On Sunday, the Palestinian Civil Defense reported “at least” 25 dead, “including 13 children”, in a strike which targeted a family home in Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip.

The building was completely razed and transformed into a pile of stones, noted an AFP correspondent.

“This morning, around six o’clock, there was a huge explosion. When we got here, we found torn bodies! “, said Abdallah al-Najjar, a member of the family, in the midst of the destruction.

“Limit the risk”

The Israeli army said it had targeted a site in Jabalia “where terrorists were operating”, in reference to Hamas considered a terrorist movement by Israel, the United States and the European Union. “Before the strike, numerous measures were taken to limit the risk of injuring civilians,” said a military spokesperson.

Another Israeli strike targeted a house in Gaza City, also in the north, killing five people, according to Civil Defense.

Since October 6, Israeli troops have been carrying out an air and ground offensive against the north of the Gaza Strip, particularly in Jabalia, where Hamas is, according to them, seeking to regroup its forces.

By decimating its leadership in recent months, the army has inflicted hard blows on Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the territory it occupied for 38 years.

Since the start of the war, Israel has besieged Gaza’s approximately 2.4 million residents, most of whom have been displaced and are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.

The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 led to the death of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the band. from Gaza.

That day, 251 people were kidnapped. In total, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.

More than 43,603 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli reprisals in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry.

Deadly strikes in Lebanon

In Lebanon, on Israel’s northern border, the Israeli army continued its strikes on the south and east of the country where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

In the east, at least 12 people were killed in strikes on the Baalbeck region, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. And in the south, three rescue workers affiliated with Hezbollah were killed in a strike against their center in Adloun, according to the ministry.

The Israeli army, for its part, indicated that it had dismantled a Hezbollah tunnel under a cemetery in the region.

But an Israeli strike also hit a region north of Beirut on Sunday, killing at least 23 people including seven children in the town of Aalmat, about forty kilometers from the capital, the Health Ministry said.

AFP images show rescuers searching the rubble of a completely razed house with their bare hands, removing bodies wrapped in blankets. Next to it, an excavator removes the stone blocks.

In addition to daily airstrikes, Israeli troops have been carrying out a ground offensive since September 30 in southern Lebanon, bordering northern Israel.

Furthermore, Israel claimed responsibility for the first time for the explosions on September 17 and 18 of Hezbollah members’ booby-trapped transmission devices, causing, according to the Lebanese authorities, around forty dead and nearly 3,000 injured. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Sunday that he had given the green light to the operation.

In Syria, a new Israeli strike left seven dead and 14 injured, including women and children in Sayyeda Zeinab, an area which is home to an important Shiite sanctuary, defended by pro-Iranian groups, including Hezbollah, according to the Observatory Syrian Human Rights Organization (OSDH).