Several dozen people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, ravaged by more than a year of war between Hamas and Israel, whose army claimed to be targeting “terrorist targets” in the north of the territory. Palestinian.
Posted at 8:55 a.m.
Updated at 11:09 a.m.
Triggered on October 7, 2023 by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil, the war has spread to Lebanon, where the Israeli army is carrying out intense bombings against strongholds of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement, which opened a front against Israel in support of Hamas from October 8, 2023.
Hezbollah media chief Mohammad Afif, who has held press conferences in recent weeks, was killed in a targeted raid in Beirut on Sunday while he was at the offices of a major Syrian party in a building from the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood, a security source said.
When contacted, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on this information. Israel has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership in recent months by killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27, as well as several military and political leaders.
Wounded under the rubble
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
People mourn Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike, at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 17, 2024.
In the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, at least 56 people have been killed in Israeli raids, according to Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.
The deadliest strike took place in the middle of the night in Beit Lahia (North), on a five-story building.
At least 30 bodies, including women and children, were pulled from the rubble and dozens of people are still missing, Bassal told AFP.
“The chances of saving more wounded [coincés sous les décombres] are decreasing due to continuous shooting and artillery bombardment,” the spokesperson said.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People look at the rubble of a building hit during an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, November 17, 2024.
According to AFP images, the building was transformed into a pile of ruins. Bodies wrapped in blankets were evacuated on a cart pulled by a donkey.
The Israeli army launched a major ground operation in northern Gaza on October 6 to, it said, prevent Hamas fighters from reconstituting their forces.
“Terrorist activities continue in the Beit Lahia region,” the army said in a statement to AFP, adding that “several strikes” had been carried out during the night “against terrorist targets”.
“Biased” report
Twenty-six other people, including women and children, died in bombings in the south, in Rafah and Khan Younes, and in the center, in Nousseirat and Al-Bureij, Bassal added.
“An Israeli drone attack” in Khan Younes “targeted a group of unarmed people who were providing security for an aid delivery, killing six,” Civil Defense said.
Jihad Eid, who lost a nephew in the raid on a house in Al-Bureij, describes a “horrible” situation. “They were innocent children. »
On October 7, 2023, Hamas commandos infiltrated from the neighboring Gaza Strip carried out an attack of unprecedented scale in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to a count by the AFP based on official data, including hostages killed or died in captivity.
That day, 251 people were kidnapped. In total, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
In response, the Israeli army launched a campaign of destructive aerial bombardments followed by a ground offensive in Gaza which left 43,846 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced as “biased” and “anti-Israeli” a recent report by a special UN committee according to which the methods of warfare employed by Israel in the Gaza Strip “correspond to the characteristics of a genocide.”
Two Lebanese soldiers killed
Alongside its offensive in Gaza, Israel is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. After a year of cross-border violence, the Israeli army launched an intense aerial bombardment campaign against the Islamist movement on September 23 and a ground offensive in the south of the country on September 30.
PHOTO HUSSEIN MALLA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Smoke rises between buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, November 17, 2024.
Israel wants to distance the Lebanese movement from the border regions of southern Lebanon and stop its rocket attacks which have displaced some 60,000 residents of northern Israel.
On Sunday, the Israeli army again bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut located near the international airport, after calling on residents to evacuate areas close, according to it, to “Hezbollah installations”.
It also carried out air raids in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese army, which said two of its soldiers were killed by a strike that “directly” targeted their position in the village of al-Mari.
Hezbollah, for its part, fired around twenty projectiles towards the western Galilee and the Bay of Haifa, in northern Israel, the army said. Some were intercepted.
More than 3,452 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 8, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health, the majority since September 23.
