The Israeli military on Saturday renewed its orders for Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and shelters as troops continue a weeklong offensive against militants.
Most of the fighting has centered in and around Jabaliya, which has been pounded by Israeli war jets and artillery. Residents said they have been trapped inside their homes and shelters.
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Israel also has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border after a year of exchanges of fire. Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hamas' ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
It's been a year since Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed into army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. They are still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
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Lebanon's Health Ministry says Israeli strikes kill more than a dozen
Israeli airstrikes on Saturday hit multiple areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing more than a dozen people and causing damage to hospitals, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, as fighting with the Hezbollah militant group continued.
Nine people were killed in Maisra village in the northeast, with 15 wounded, the ministry said. Four people were killed and 18 wounded in an apartment building on the edge of Barja south of Beirut.
The ministry said Rayak and Tal Chiha hospitals in the Bekaa Valley were damaged, while seven people were wounded in strikes on Brital and Temnine in Baalbek-Hermel province. In Nabatieh, eight people were wounded.
Beirut’s southern suburbs, which have previously faced heavy bombardment, have not been struck in the past 48 hours. Hezbollah functions as a state within a state there.
The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed and over 10,000 wounded, according to the ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed since mid-September. It isn’t clear how many were fighters.
US considers sending defense system to Israel, officials say
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is considering sending one of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems to Israel, U.S. officials said Saturday. A defense official said no final decision has been made.
A U.S. official said there were ongoing discussions late last week about deploying a THAAD to Israel. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The U.S. has a wide range of missile defense systems arrayed across the Middle East and Europe, including Patriot systems. Officials have been discussing for months what types of air defense systems to deploy to the region and where to put them. Any move of a THAAD to Israel would involve the deployment of soldiers to operate the complex system.
A year ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the deployment of a THAAD battery and additional Patriot battalions to locations around the Middle East to increase protection of U.S. forces and to aid in the defense of Israel. According to an April report by the Congressional Research Service, the Army has seven THAAD batteries. Generally each consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors, radio and radar equipment and it requires 95 soldiers to operate.
The THAAD is considered a complimentary system to the Patriot, but it can defend a wider area. It can hit targets at ranges of 150-200 kilometers (93-124 miles).
— Lolita Baldor
Israel allows schools to resume in parts of the north despite rocket fire
NEW YORK — The Israeli army has eased restrictions in parts of the country’s north even as it continued to trade fire with Lebanon's Hezbollah.
The changes allow for schools to reopen in parts of the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and parts of the Western Galilee if they have quickly accessible shelters. Some restrictions on gatherings were eased as well.
In other parts of the north, educational activity is still prohibited.
The announcement comes despite a barrage of rockets fired by Hezbollah into Israel Friday night and Saturday, celebrated in Israel as Yom Kippur, or the Jewish Day of Atonement. The military says some of the approximately 320 projectiles were intercepted, and no injuries have been reported.
The military also says it has struck 280 military targets in Lebanon and Gaza over the weekend, and that it killed 50 Hezbollah militants. It has provided no evidence for the latter claim.
Separately, Hezbollah says it launched an attack with explosive drones on the suburbs of Tel Aviv on Friday night. One drone directly hit a nursing home in Herzliya, a city north of Tel Aviv, Israeli media said. No casualties have been reported.
Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes kill at least 22
CAIRO — Israeli airstrikes flattened a residential area and killed at least 22 people including women and children in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza, Palestinian medical officials said Saturday.
In an area where Israel’s military launched a major ground operation last week, one of the strikes late Friday destroyed an entire building, killing at least 20 people and severely damaging several nearby buildings in the center of Jabaliya camp, according to the Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service.
A different strike killed a mother, father and injured their baby in another part of Jabaliya, medical officials said.
First responders who rushed to the area before the strikes had ceased found a 20-meter (65-foot) deep hole within a house in the area.
At least 20 bodies had been recovered from the area as of Saturday morning, with many others said to be missing under the rubble, emergency service officials said, adding that at least six women and seven children were killed.
Gaza’s health ministry on Saturday said hospitals across Gaza received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 219 wounded. The deaths brought the death tally to 42,175 since the war began on Oct. 7 last year, with 98,339 wounded, according to the ministry.
Israeli military officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The strikes late Friday are part of Israel’s latest broadening offensive in northern Gaza.
US military hits Islamic State camps in Syria with airstrikes
The U.S. military said it conducted a series of airstrikes against multiple camps in Syria belonging to the Islamic State group.
The U.S. Central Command said the strikes on Friday will “disrupt the ability of ISIS to plan, organize and conduct attacks against the United States, its allies and partners, and civilians throughout the region and beyond.”
It said battle damage assessments were underway and did not include civilian casualties.
There are some 900 U.S. forces in Syria, along with an undisclosed number of contractors, mostly trying to prevent any comeback by the extremist IS group, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking control of large swaths of territory.
Speaker of Iran's parliament visits Beirut
BEIRUT — The speaker of Iran’s parliament on Saturday toured the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut that killed and wounded dozens, vowing that Tehran would keep supporting Lebanese and Palestinians in fighting against Israel.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf visited the bombed area after holding talks with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who said that Lebanon’s priority now was working toward a cease-fire.
His office said that Lebanon’s government still abides by a 2006 U.N. Security Council Resolution approved at the end of a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah and was prepared to boost Lebanese army presence along the country’s border with Israel.
“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” Qalibaf said during the tour, during which he was escorted by several Hezbollah officials.
Qalibaf added that Iran will aid the Lebanese people and “we hope that they will be victorious.”
It was the second recent visit by an Iranian official to Beirut after the foreign minister visited rarlier this month. Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah that has suffered major setbacks in recent weeks, including the killing of it leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah started attacking Israeli army posts in October last year in solidarity with the militant Hamas group in Gaza. Since Sept. 23, Israel has intensified its airstrikes and forced the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese. Last week, Israel began a ground invasion of Lebanon, leading to clashes along the border with Hezbollah fighters.
No food has entered northern Gaza since Oct. 1, UN says
CAIRO — The United Nations food agency said on Saturday that no food aid had entered northern Gaza since Oct. 1.
The World Food Program said that the primary border crossing into the war-ravaged area had been closed for about two weeks, warning that Israel’s ongoing ground operation has a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinians families there.
“The north is basically cut off and we’re not able to operate there,” said Antoine Renard, the WFP country director of Palestinian territories.
Concerns of a hunger crisis have risen in Gaza roughly a month after the U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians.
Israel has denied such allegations and insisted that it has allowed food and other aid into Gaza in significant quantities.
“Israel has not halted the entry or coordination of humanitarian aid entering from its territory into the northern Gaza Strip. As evidence, humanitarian aid coordinated by COGAT and international organizations will continue to enter the northern Gaza Strip in the coming day as well,” COGAT, the Israeli military body overseeing aid distribution, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The WFP said its food distribution points, as well as kitchens and bakeries in northern Gaza, have been forced to shut down due to airstrikes, military ground operations and evacuation orders. It said that the only functioning bakery in North Gaza, supported by WFP, caught fire after being hit by an explosive munition.
The WFP said its last remaining food supplies in the north -- including canned food, wheat flour, high-energy biscuits, and nutrition supplements -- have been distributed to shelters, health facilities and kitchens in Gaza City and three shelters in the northern areas. It is unclear how long these limited food supplies will last, warning that the consequences for fleeing families will be dire if the escalation continues.
EU concerns over Israeli legislation that would ban UNRWA
JERUSALEM — The European Union said Saturday it was deeply concerned about draft Israeli legislation that would ban the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Israel and likely scale back aid distribution across war-ravaged Gaza.
Earlier this week, an Israeli parliamentary committee approved a pair of bills this week that would ban UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and end all contact between the government and the U.N. agency. The bill needs final approval from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
“If adopted, (the bill) would have disastrous consequences, preventing the U.N. agency from continuing to provide its services and protection to Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and Gaza,” the EU said in an online statement.
Israel has alleged that some of UNRWA’s thousands of staff members participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.
The U.N. has since fired more than a dozen staffers after internal investigations found they may have taken part in the attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel.
The U.N. agency has been the main supplier of food, water and shelter to Palestinian civilians during the 12 month conflict in Gaza.
Concern about the Israeli bill was echoed by UNRWA’s chief, Philippe Lazzarini, on Wednesday, who said all humanitarian operations in Gaza and the West Bank could “disintegrate” if the bill was implemented.
When UNRWA was created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949, it was meant to provide health care, education and welfare services to about 700,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 conflict with Israel.
Israeli military renews evacuation orders for northern Gaza
CAIRO — The Israeli military on Saturday renewed orders for Palestinian in the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and shelters amid a week of intense fighting with militants there.
Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for the Israeli military, told people that the area includes parts of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and other parts in and around Jabaliya, the urban refugee camp.
In a post on X, Adraee asked people living there to head south to Muwasi, a packed area in southern Gaza designed by the military as a humanitarian zone.
Most of past week fighting centered in and around Jabaliya with Israeli war jets and artillery pounding the area. People there said they have been trapped inside their homes and shelters. The military also ordered the three main hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate patients and medical staff.