Israel, at war against Hamas and Hezbollah, carried out strikes on Sunday in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. These left dozens dead, including many children, according to Palestinian and Lebanese sources.
The Israeli army seeks to incapacitate the two armed 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 allied with Iran.
In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Civil Defense reported on Sunday ‘at least’ 25 dead, ‘including 13 children’, in a strike which targeted a house in Jabalia, in the north of the Palestinian territory.
The building was reduced to a pile of stones, according to an AFP correspondent.
‘This morning, around six o’clock, there was a huge explosion. When we arrived here, we found torn bodies!’, said Abdallah al-Najjar, a family member.
‘Limit the risk’
The Israeli army said it had targeted a site in Jabalia ‘where terrorists were operating’, referring 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,’ according to the army.
Another Israeli strike hit 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 heavy blows on the Palestinian Islamist movement 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 the Gaza Strip’s approximately 2.4 million residents, most of whom have been displaced and are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.
“A large part of the more than two million people suffer from acute malnutrition and live in unimaginable conditions,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock lamented on Sunday.
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, and three others in the village of Al-Qasr, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. And in the south, three rescue workers affiliated with Hezbollah were killed in a strike against their center in Adloun, according to the ministry.
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, according to the same source.
AFP images show rescuers searching the rubble of a completely razed house with their bare hands, removing bodies wrapped in blankets.
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, which according to the Lebanese authorities left 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.
The Israeli army indicated in the evening that it had intercepted two drones coming from the east. Several drone attacks on Israel have been claimed by pro-Iranian groups in Iraq in recent weeks.
In Syria, a new Israeli strike left nine dead, including a Hezbollah commander, in Sayyeda Zeinab, an area which is home to an important Shiite sanctuary, defended by pro-Iranian groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
/ATS
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