Strikes in Gaza kill 50; Israel says drone targets prime minister’s house
The Israeli government said a drone targeted the prime minister’s house Saturday, though there were no casualties, as Iran’s supreme leader vowed Hamas would continue its fight following the killing of the mastermind of last year’s deadly Oct. 7 attack.
Sirens wailed in Israel warning of incoming fire from Lebanon; the military said dozens of projectiles were launched. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the drone targeted his house in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea, though neither he nor his wife were home.
The barrage comes as Israel considers how to respond to an Iranian attack this month and presses its offensives against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Gaza, Israeli forces fired at hospitals in the battered northern part of the Palestinian territory, and strikes in the enclave killed more than 50 people, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there.
Israel’s killing of Hamas’ leader is a harsh blow, analysts say, but hardly a fatal one.
Israeli strikes pound Gaza as Hamas rejects hostage release
Israel and Hamas are both signaling resistance to ending the war in the Gaza Strip after Israeli forces killed Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar.
On Friday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sinwar’s death was a painful loss but noted that Hamas carried on despite the killings of other Palestinian militant leaders before him.
“Hamas is alive and will stay alive,” Khamenei said in his first comments on the killing.
Many Iranians, especially educated ones, were reconciled to constraints on nuclear weapons development. Now, fear of an Israeli strike may be changing that.
Since Sinwar’s death, Hamas has reiterated its stance that the hostages taken from Israel a year ago will not be released until there is a cease-fire in Gaza and a withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu said his country’s military will keep fighting until the hostages are released, and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.
Sinwar was the chief architect of the 2023 Hamas raid on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. Sinwar’s killing appeared to be a chance front-line encounter with Israeli troops on Wednesday. Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas politically in Gaza, and killing Sinwar was a top military priority.
In Israel, families of hostages still held in Gaza demanded the Israeli government use Sinwar’s killing as a way to restart negotiations to bring home their loved ones. There are about 100 hostages remaining in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza since last year’s Hamas attack have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children.
Where do Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on foreign policy areas such as Mexico, NATO, Ukraine, Israel-Hamas and the Gaza war, China, the Koreas?
More strikes pounded Gaza on Saturday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement that Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and that forces opened fire at the hospital’s building and its courtyard, causing panic among patients and medical staff.
At Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, strikes hit the building’s top floors, injuring several staff members, the hospital said in a statement. Three houses in Jabaliya were struck overnight Friday, killing at least 30 people, more than half of them women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service. At least 80 people were injured.
In central Gaza, at least 10 people were killed, including two children, when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, where the casualties were taken. Another strike killed 11 people, all from the same family, in the Maghazi refugee camp, the same hospital said. Associated Press journalists counted the bodies from both strikes at the hospital.
A United Nations school sheltering displaced people in the west of Gaza City was also hit, killing several people, according to the Hamas-run civil defense first responders.
The strikes knocked out internet networks in northern Gaza, said Paltel, the Palestinian communications company, on Facebook Saturday.
The war has destroyed vast swaths of Gaza, displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, and left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
Barrages from Lebanon target northern Israel
In addition to the drone launched at Netanyahu’s private residence, Israel’s military said some 180 projectiles were fired throughout the day from Lebanon on Saturday morning. A 50-year-old man was killed after being hit by shrapnel while sitting in his car in northern Israel, and four people were injured, Israel’s medical services said.
As Israel expands its strikes far from Hezbollah’s bastions into areas where displaced Shiites have fled, fears rise about worsening sectarian tensions.
In the northern city of Kiryat Ata, sirens blared as people ran for cover and intercepted missiles exploded in the sky. One rocket landed in the area, and Associated Press reporters saw burned cars and a damaged building. Itzik Billet, commander for the Haifa area, said nine people were lightly injured.
The Israeli fire service also said it was battling several blazes resulting from missiles in the Shlomi area, less than a mile from the Lebanese border.
Israel’s war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah — a Hamas ally backed by Iran — has intensified in recent weeks. Hezbollah said Friday that it planned to launch a new phase of fighting by sending more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel. The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon earlier in October.
Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah set off furious grief or grim satisfaction, redoubling fears of a widening regional war.
On Saturday, Israel’s military issued fresh evacuation warnings for two buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb of Haret Hriek. Israel has issued near-daily warnings for people to leave buildings and villages across parts of Lebanon. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people, including some 400,000 children.
Israel also said Saturday it killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander in the southern town of Bint Jbeil. The army said Nasser Rashid supervised attacks against Israel.
In Lebanon, the health ministry said an Israeli airstrike Saturday hit a vehicle on a main highway north of Beirut, killing two people. It was unclear who was in the car when it was struck.
Schreck and Magdy write for the Associated Press. AP reporters Jack Jeffery from Ramallah, West Bank and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
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